Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria KonnikovaGroup Chat Protocols, Bracket Updates, and thoughts on the WNBA
This week, Nate and Maria discuss The Atlantic’s bombshell report about how its top editor was added to a national security group chat, and get into why the most major security risk is never technology–it’s always people. Then, they give an update on their March Madness bracket contest, and try to figure out why on earth players have to wait until they’re 22 to join the WNBA.
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Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and.
Live on tape from the beautiful Pushkin Studios in the Flying In District of New York City, New York. I'm Nate Silver.
Yes, this is correct. This is the first time that Nate and I are both in the studio in the same place since the pilot of the show. Nate.
But if you detect an extra special chemistry, it's very close quarters. You're actually it is.
Yeah, And today we've got some some stories for you. First up, the Failing Atlantic Monthly.
Failing Atlantic Monthly.
Has a quite the scoop, So we're going to be talking about Jeffrey Goldberg's signal, information security and what not to do on your group chat.
Then we'll talk ketchup on our NCAA brackets recap, for example, how team Nate so far in the lead against Team Maria and Monty. And we'll talk about women's basketball and why on earth are women not allowed to join the WNBA until twenty two years old.
Let's get into it, Nate, but before we do, you moved. You are now in a new apartment.
Now I moved from a neighborhood which might generously be called Chelsea, but really is South Penn Station.
To thank you, name you finally, now that you moved on final New.
York Times On the New York Times Leader map, it was considered seventy percent Chelsea. All right, all right, Chelsea Midtown West High correct.
Now that you're out of there, you can acknowledge that it really was not Chelsea.
No, And like there is something about being like in an actual like neighborhood. Yea, Like you know, South Penn Northeast Chelsea as I call it, serves kind of this transient community, right, so people commuting in and out of the city. It's there are some working spaces there, right, people go into Nixon Rangers games. I like Nick and Rangers, right, But like you know, Massiesquare Garden like dominates in some ways that profile the neighborhood. And so yeah, this is a real neighborhood. And like they're you know, I'm reading the esperate climb. But there's an abundance, right, Not only do you have your independent coffee shops in the morning, right, you have your French Vietnamese independent coffee shop on your Scandinavian independent coffee shop. Right, you have your vaguely Russian, Eastern European, mostly vegetarian wine bar. It's like, and they're all pretty fucking good.
Right, I'm glad you're now in your a new neighborhood. I'm glad you're finally moved, because, as we all know, moving sucks the process that is, So I'm glad that's behind you. Let's talk about something a little bit less fun. I mean, on some level it's kind of hilarious, which is that this week there was an absolute bombshell You know, bombshell is usually overused, but I feel like this was a bombshell piece in the Atlantic, unprecedented as far as I can tell, in the amples of national security, where Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic, was inadvertently included on a signal chat with members top members of US national security that we're discussing a then imminent attack on the whoties. Let's start off by just talking about info sec or information security and how the fuck something like this happens.
Well, no, I am a top Information security is my top issue. Right. The reason I voted for Donald Trump and twin Syxs teenage because of Hiller Clinton's email server. I thought that was the most important story in the country. I thought there was too little press coverage of it. If anything, Sorry, I vote for Trump.
Yes, everyone who thought that they was serious night did not vote for Trump in twenty sixteen. This was he was being sarcastic.
Are you a group chat girl? Person?
I am only in a few group chats, and those group chats are like three people, you know, Like I'm in a group chat with you and your partner. Yeah, And I'm in a similar group chat with you know, my college roommates and a few others. But i hate group chats.
Yeah, I'm not a big awful. I'm not a big I think it's probably because now this is where I sound like a fucking snob, right, But like Maria, you and I like have we're kind of like we're able to communicate. We kind of communicate professionally for a living, right, And so like I could see the value of like a group chat if like, if you want this cool people that you're like who care about your opinions, right, But like if you're writing all the time, I'm like, it's with emails too. I want to fucking write a long email. Now I'm making a fucking newsletter. Montize that shit talk about in the podcast Monetize that shit. I'm not giving free stuff away in group chats.
Sorry, no, that's absolutely true. So I've had to set up group chats a few times for various reasons, and whenever I do, I'm actually super paranoid about putting the wrong person in the group chat. So Nate, for instance, let me use you as an example, because I've had to add you to group chats for scheduling purposes, and I have several Nates in my phone, and you are never the first Nate to come up, probably because you don't have an iPhone, so my iPhone doesn't like that and always is like, no, don't, don't use this Nate. And so you know, barstool Nate, he is also in my phone, Wow, And he is the one who is always coming up before you. And I am always paranoid, Sorry, barstool Nate, but I'm always paranoid that I'm going to add the wrong Nate to one of these things. And I triple check to make sure that you know, I don't inadvertently say, you know, Ad, and I'm adding the wrong person now I'm only highlighting this to say, Okay, when you're starting a group chat, and this is just about scheduling, you probably care about who's in it. Now, imagine your schedule. You're doing a group chat about bombing a country, right, or bombing a group? Shouldn't you double check, triple check, quadruple joke? I mean, okay, wait, what am I even talking about? Why are we starting a group chat about national security? Rule number one? And you probably have learned this as a journalist. You never put anything in an email or in a chat that you don't want on the front page of the New York Times, potentially because.
And that's the other reason why I don't like, I'm pretty circumctanted about what to say over email or even you know, even a private event. I'm just careful about what I gues say, whereas I kind of in call, you know, I say lots of shit like yeah, well the podcast and on Twitter and whatever else in the newsletter, but like, but yeah, I don't assume that things stay private without like explicit Yeah, understand.
You can't assume they stay private, and you can't assume that things don't get passed along. That basically the only people who see them are going to be the people who you are sending them to. So nothing should be done over chat that is sensitive. That's not how you communicate national security, that's not how you communicate war plans. But in this case, that is what happened. Now. One of the things I learned when I was back when I was working on the Confidence Game, I actually talk to a lot of people who do information security, who do cybersecurity, because hacking and you know that that kind of social engineering is huge for con artists. And they all told me, I don't care what kind of a security system you have, you know, I don't care how up to date you are, who's your you know, who does your infosec all of this stuff. You're only as strong as your weakest human link. And it's always going to be human. It's never going to be technological, right, there's always going to be that dumb person. And if I can get to that dumb person, then I can take you down, right, I don't, I don't. I can get behind any firewall, I can get past anything. And this that's just like one oh one ABC, And this is like the textbook case of wait. I didn't even need to do anything, right, you just fucked up so badly that you know you just here here is the weakest link, and the weakest link happens to be at the top of our national intelligence.
So one thing I'd say is you are bringing a lot of people that don't have a lot of experience in government. Right. I listened to the as Recline podcast with I think it was Ben Buchanan, who was like a basically one of Biden's heads of AI policy, and he's like, yeah, you go into the government and like there are rooms where you're not allowed to use the internet, and there are all these protocols that are quite cumbersome, and if you come from the private sector, I'm sure it's like extremely annoying. Right. And so the fact that like, you know, JD. Van's only two years in government, right, Pete Haig Stiff no years and government less, I'm forgetting about something, Right. You bring in people that are like our kind of Fox and count I think, you know, it's kind of could be state on media. I don't know, but yeah, you're bringing people who like are just like, hey, we're kind of treating this like a group chat, like we're negotiating some VC deal or whatever, and like, on the one hand, it's kind of like, how do I put this, the casualness of the language, I'm not you know, I don't think any of them come off especially badly in the text that are referent. I mean, if anything, they're kind of like, if anything that seemed like, I mean, there are internal politics, Like Steven Miller comes in. He's the kind of Trump advisor and he's like, don't go too far and interpreting crumps shit, right, and then they kind of shut up, right, But like, but you know, look, I'm sure Jadi Vance is a smart guy, right, I think he might be in over his debt. I think he's like a smart guy. And it's kind of fun to watch them to chatting. But yeah, why is this journalist? Why is this journalist copied on this chain?
Yeah? And and no one and no one catch which is that he's on the chain at any point and apparently so we don't know, but apparently there are very sensitive details shared. And at this point, so just in terms of journalistic ethics, you know, people are joking and saying, you know, you're a journalist, why didn't you stay in the chat? Well, it's because Jeffrey Goldberg actually understands the repercussions of this, and at the moment that this was actually said that this is that this is correct right, that this isn't because at first he didn't know if this was a spoof or like what this was right? But once it was confirmed that this is legit, he left. And I think that that is the ethical thing to do. Although there's obviously a part of me that is like, oh, but what else could you have learned? But I think that that is the ethical and the legally safer thing to do, because you know, people will try, I think, to come after him, and it was smart to leave.
I think you can debate it. I mean, look fundamentally, Okay, let's let's ask you. Let's say that you're added to the group chat. What do you what do you do?
Well? I think at first, especially given you know my my background and the books that I've written, the book I'm working on, I would assume that it's fake. I mean that would be my initial assumption. How could you not assume that it's fake?
When he did say until he kind of performed this out of sample test where he, like I guess, he said he drove to they make a movie about it, right, wrote he drives to some suburban grocery store and waits in a parking lot, and it was like, well, if they announced in the next fifteen minutes that were bombing Yemen, right, and this is real? This is real and yeah, and the Trump people kind of caught off guard, kind of did acknowledge this was a real chat. Right. Where their heads will roll because of this, I don't know, probably depends on who Trump's mad at it.
Yeah, I doubt heads will roll, And I think that probably the the two heads that might roll are the head of the person who acknowledged that it was real immediately and Goldberg, right, like, they're they're going to try to find a way to pin this on him instead, because that is there, you know initially, you know, the when Pete Hegsas was asked about this, he said, oh, it's fake, this isn't real, right, but the government had already acknowledged that it was very much real.
Have you ever gotten a scoop just by kind of being in the reference at the right time.
Yeah, I have. I have, especially because I'm female and so people tend to forget that I exist as an actual person. With a brain. No, it's true. It's true. It's true. I can, like I blend into the background and people forget to take me into account. I'm assuming with you, it's probably less likely that people are you.
Know, it's always just thing like kind of what people And it's probably as different if you're male and in white whatever, you know, mistakenly taken for heterosexual in my case. But like what people feel comfortable sharing with you, I mean this is true even at the at the poker table, in both public games and private games and poker, there is kind of, I think a pretty strong unspoken understanding that like, you know, if something relates, if someone relates to me at the poker table, then if I don't have a relationship with them, right, I would kind of anonymize. Yeah, right, But people do have a lot of trust, right, I mean I've heard people discussing wildly illegal things at the poker Oh for sure.
For sure, they do have a lot of trust, and they do often forget that you're a journalist and you do have to remind them. But but yeah, I think it's very interesting that not only Hexath, but like the Trump reaction to this was, you know, what's the aleotic failing magazine. Right, nobody cares.
About this, I'm sure a million plus page yeah and.
So and so if you if you think about, you know, what is ideal risk mitigation strategy? Right, like, Okay, you fuck up? What do you do now?
Right?
Like, from a risk management mitigation standpoint, what is the best thing to do next? And I would argue that the best thing, the way that people usually come off the best, and this comes from both organizations in on an individual level, is to immediately acknowledge it and be like, yeah, fucked up, sorry, and then like we'll get back to you, and then you know, issue whatever, apology, et cetera. But you always always always look a million times worse and it spirals out of control and it gets like a much bigger story. Right, It becomes much worse if you deny, it becomes much worse if you try to, you know, put a rug over it, me spill no, no, look, the floor is beautiful. And so I think that this is just being handled completely backwards. And you would think that people who have media training that's something he does have, would know better, right, would know that that always always always backfires. I don't think there's a single case that I can think of when it doesn't backfire, when the person looks better because they initially denied and then they were forced to acknowledge.
So ignoring is often a good strategy. Right. There is a strissand effect thing where like the news cycle moves on quickly. So a lot of you'll pay expensive money for a PR person, or you'll have you know, if for a big corporation, that PR team will come in a lot of time to say, don't say anything. We'll do a little bit of work in the background with reporters. We're working on the story, but don't say anything. Go take go to the woods for a couple of days, and it'll probably go away. Right, Yeah, this is I mean, you know, if you're in the White House, it's a little bit different than this has national security implications. I mean, look, part of the issue is in general, you know, you're a powerful person. You're the vice president, or you're the secretary of Defense, or you're somebody who thinks you're kind of like doing some of the most important work in the world, and you're busy and you don't care that much about like security, Right, that's someone else's problem, and so it's kind of like the annoying thing that like, I'm mean, I'm worried about this, like in a lot of ways I'm worried about like hacking of a labs. And I'm sure they take it somewhat seriously, but like knowing that personality type, you know, I don't think they probably take it seriously enough. It's seen as like is pureaucratic shit. You have to like jump up. By the way, I tell you something, if you want to use the the men's bathroom at the at the Pushkin Studios in Flat Iron, there's a four digit code. I'm telling you it's it's not the most difficult code to guess.
Speaking about information security.
That's easiest.
Well, you'd be you know, can we can we just go go way back in history. One of my favorite stories. I love the writing of Richard Feynman. I think you know he was a brilliant mind, brilliant writer, but he has a hilarious story about information security where he had a complete fascination with safe cracking, Like he would go down these rabbit holes with different things, and at some point he became fascinated with cryptography and safe cracking, and he became very adept at cracking into safes, and mostly how he did it wasn't he didn't you know, traind with criminals and you know, figure out, like in the movies, how do you listen to all of that? No, he figured out that it was always easy to get the code right because there was always a secretary who like had written it down somewhere or something like that. And then there was actually an incredibly important safe, and there was a series of them that had national security secret stuff because he worked in really important on you know, important projects, important energy projects, things that were highly classified. And he was like, oh, I wonder if I can crack into these safes, and he couldn't find anyone writing down the combination. He was striking out, and finally he was like, you know what, I'm going to try the factory code, and he did and the safe opened.
Oh no, and he was like huh.
So he went to the second one. There was three of them. He tried the factory code, the safe opened and the third one as well. So he wrote notes in all three and it was like yeah, and left them and then the guy opened them in the wrong order and didn't realize that it was fein men, you know, making a point and thought that they had been like severely compromised and freaked the fuck out as he should have. Just this goes to show, right that people are dumb.
And I mean there are trade offs, right if you like need to go with draw money from your bank and they're like, you know, you face this as a poker player, right, They're like, what's it for. It's like, it's my fucking money. You have custody of it, right, give it to me.
Yeah, and yeah, no, this there these these types of things happen all the time, and but I think we do need to be worried, like the bigger implication. I think there are a few big implications here. First, it happened, and they're saying, oh, well, it only happened once in two months. Okay. First of all, it's never happened. That's that it's never happened before. Like this is huge, and they're denying it. They're taking it like no big deal. It is a big deal, Like they were lucky that it was Jeffrey Goldberg and not someone else who was by mistake on this chat. By the way, maybe other people and other chats had other actors on there that were there by mistake, Like, this is a big deal. Information security is incredibly important. Denying is not the correct strategy if you want to mitigate risk. And we should be really really worried about this. This is not something that is.
Like an't even supposed to have signal government phones. No, you're not saying private phones, which is kind of what people were mad about with Hillary, and like.
Exactly, I mean everything about this, from start to finish is incredibly worrisome. So I mean.
Triump Literally, do you know that if Anthony fucking Wiener hadn't been sexing? Right? Like, yeah, probably know, Clinton becomes president? Maybe trup because president in twenty twenty to be honest, right, and then what happens in twenty five?
I don't know, right, But so many, so many stupid miss so much stupidity here and so much mail you go, I have to say that that results and things like this. But yes, from a risky business standpoint, this is one bad, risky decision after another. Nate, let's take a break and let's talk about some March madness. Brackets. Can we start with a spoiler alert? Nate is currently winning our brackets competition, and.
Worse Maria and Monty have to root for Duke is their only pathway back to victory.
And Tennessee.
First of all, it's probably gonna put me further ahead, right, but.
Like if Tennessee wins, it doesn't put you further ahead.
Hundred dogs, Maria, I know, I know, but they might win.
Yeah, and we have Purdue. We have one victor over Nate. So far, we had Purdue as a pick and Nate did not.
Okay, what I have at a Colorado State? Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. So how is a tournament going? I would say it's a good tournament if you're betting on all the favorites to win, right, you know, you have all the sixteen teams left in the men's tournament are from major conferences. Right, you have I think one double digit seed. You have all the one seeds intact, all but one of the two seeds intact. So and I read the article before nand saying, hey, we have more and more upsets than say tournament it's gradual, but it's happening this year. This year we did not. We had lots of chalk. As we defind the term lost swee, which means that like you know, the one seeds go forward, the favorites.
Win, except there were some upsets in the earlier rounds, right.
Which is that is that some of the more like the Colorado sticking they were like the lower seed who they'd beat, but like they were actually a favorite in our in our model, right, Like there were no you know, Saint John's lost to Arkansas, which was I believe it a ten seed, and you know, Saint John's kind of was a foul trouble. They benched their best player and kind of otherwise played like crap, right, but you know, but you know Arkansas had one beating a pretty a Kansas team, right, It wasn't like a yeah, very and that's the biggest episode of the events so far. But there have been like at most eighty twenty upsets, none of the ninety five to five variety that are are quite fun, right, And so like, you know, how do you evaluate that from like a bracket standpoint. On the one hand, if people are going to like the silver built in model and picking the favorites, are probably pretty happy, right if you're doing something we're trying to like calibrate relative to the odds of an upset, like you know, full disclosure. I do make bets on these games, right, and yeah, in general I was betting more underdogs than favorites.
Why is that name?
So I think our our model, I think thought that, like there's more parody in college basketball to a degree that like maybe other systems aren't accounting for. So this trend toward parody has reversed itself. Whether that's a small sample sized thing or I mean, there are things that are changing. So in college now there are nil deals, which I believe standsford name, image and likeness, and so now maybe there's more incentive to go to like a big program like a Duke or a Kentucky, where I mean all those big programs already had that advantage, right, but maybe that could be changing things. Maybe some I mean, Duke is clearly a very strong team. Maybe the one seeds are particularly particularly good this year, you know, some of the more plucky teams like Gonzaga is a minor excuse me, a mid major team that our model thought was like super underrated, but we're an eight C, which means you faced the one seed. I believe it was Houston in the around of thirty two, and like, so you know, the teams that we thought had good potential to overperform or in disadvantageous positions where they faced other very good teams. Right, So that's part of it too. The women's side, I mean, this is kind of how it goes, right. I mean, there are in any given year, you know, between like one to five or six women's programs that are just like so much better than the rest, right, the programs where men's college basketball is treated as like, you know, co equal to to the men's program. Right, that's not everywhere. It might be a dozen to two dozen schools and a game in a year. A few of those are really good, but like it's it's it's you know, a lot of colleges are not aspiring to treat women's basketball is like a revenue sport, as it's called, whereas ones that are can do quite well. Right, But there's you know, gigantic gaps. And if you look at women's college basketball tenants and a gigantic gaps from some team selling sixteen thousand seats a game to some literally sell one hundred seats a game, right, and so and so you see that, you see that lack of parody play itself out.
Yeah, no, that all makes that all makes sense. And in full disclosure, I have not watched any of the women's games, and.
You watch the guys.
I've watched some of the guys, yes, because we had a bracket.
How many hours over under.
An probably around two hours total, two hours more than I would normally have watched. I'm baby steps, Nate, baby steps, baby steps, I'm you know, I'm getting there. I was really rooting for Illinois. I really wanted them to win because they were one of my one of my Videosyncratic picks your Rackett. No, I still haven't. I haven't. I haven't bet any money on this. Yeah, but that was you know, I wanted to have a free and clear consultation with Monty. I did not want to use any of his uh you know, any of his insights to actually make money, although I think we would have lost money. Well, I don't know, it depends on how the bets went. But no, I've never been on sports. You know. I actually feel like I don't like for me, it's not it's not fun, you know, just like I don't I don't play table.
Just watched two hours more of because but yeah, but it's.
It's a fun bracket, but I don't have money on it. You know, it's just a sweat I you know, it's like a you're kind of a pure I.
Want my team to I'll give you a little free bets. Sometimes the first one's on me.
Gateway drug, Gateway drug. But no, I mean, in all honesty, you know, I have zero edge in sports betting. I wouldn't want to do I wouldn't want to engage in an activity that I felt I had no edge. And you have models like you actually have an edge, right, Like you're one of the sports betting is hard, and you're one of the well you're one of the few people who actually.
The tournament last year and then this year. I'm down a little bit cheer before that, I was up a little bit, like it's but you know, look, if you go so now, listen, you're I've lost more of the women than I've made on the men's right. But if you go through and say, okay, so so far are the bets I've made, I'm down four percent? Right, ROI what is the house's cut? Four percent? Right? So if you haven't a year where you're winning someone losing someone going fifty to fifty then that four percent gets straying from your bank roll over and over again. And I do think that probably you know I'm gonna but also you know, but also you run in a shit like where you're I'm restricted to kind of like two and a half sights. As I complained about last week, some of them don't take very much money on women's games. I guess it's to my benefit this year's and so the women's picks haven't been going great, but yeah, they're much more they're much more cautious about about that.
Yeah, So it's so it's increasingly more difficult to make money, even if you do have an.
Inch you have to, like I mean, it's kind of like the one thing about the tournament is like if you were really dedicated like college basketball, it's kind of like this short season but like yeah, basically, like, first of all, the more serious experiment I did was like trying to seriously bit the NBA for the book twenty three season. This is probably like two hours a day of work for seven I mean, that was real effort, right, and that I was basically break even, right, which is better than ninety nine percent of people, but like, and that's break even so it's like, okay, if I want to And by the way, at the start of that, I have nine looks like a bet on New York Im the end I have two and a half, right, and so like so you know, first of all, to make money, I'd have to like ad to vote more than two hours a day, which is you know, my time is valuable, it's real time. And then spend even more time figuring out like okay, which friends can I ask find a way get money down with or you know, it's not like these like betting sites take appeals necessarily, right, you know, maybe you can get some hamo fish, so give me back. But like so it's like it's like quite hard to make a living. You have to like be kind of I don't know, I mean there's different you can kind of capitalize it, right, Like you're a smart guy who can get down money and you find people who build a model for you and you can do things like that a little bit. But like it's not an easy way to It's like bookern noway, it's not an easy way to make a living.
No, absolutely not. Well I hope that uh this week, I hope you do well financially and I hope I do well in our bracket bets. So even though I hate saying go Duke, go Duke, you you've put me in this position. You have forced me. I know you have forced me in the go Duke and go Tennessee position. You don't mind the Tennessee.
You know they got a nice I like that orange. I like that orange color.
On that note, show to tell.
Me for our our landing pages, for the tournament stuff we have, like this thing we have to like manually enter the team, some very sensitive like which shade of orange, the burnt orange kind of Texas. By the way, it's a night I like the orange shade.
Nice. So you have so you have used all your Crayola colors from childhood? You know know what a burnt sienna and all the others. You know exactly what they look like. Yeah, do you do you remember those Crayola colors. I have some of those colors just etched into my mind because they were such cool colors. Relian was my favorite.
Is it like a blue?
It's a blue, but it just sounds so cool. Soulian. How cool is that word?
I like it?
Yeah, and I'd never heard it before, right, So I just it really appealed to my writer's sensibility. What was your favorite?
I mean, I like the red orange feels like a Nate color.
Right that was burnt Sana yea, yeah that was more brownie.
I like you by the advance and there's like a separate red orange and orange red.
That's true, that's true. Yeah, this is this is fun. A lot of a lot of kids were shaped by by Crayola colors. Guys, this will be a future episode. For now, let's let's talk about.
Like the didn't have the white crayon, but the white crayon doesn't really.
It doesn't do much. Yeah, there was a white one.
Discontinue, Hey, Crayola advice, discontinue the white crayon. It's at best of placebos Well, I guess.
On black paper. You can do it on black paper.
Okay, okay, yeah.
Yeah, alright, Crayole, please please take our advice account. Maybe maybe, maybe it's better than who knows.
You just have nine planets eight.
A lot of things have changed since we went to school. Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll talk more about the women's side of things and that pesky eligibility rule. Last week, Nate, I learned something totally crazy from you. You just casually mentioned that women were not eligible for the WNBA until they were twenty two years old. That's just like totally bad shit. Let's talk about this a little bit more. This is something that is not true of men. And why in the world does this exist? Why is it a thing?
So let me theorize, right when Caitlin Clark is probably going to offend people are sensitive out their women's basketball topics, I will say, right, people who are longtime women's basketball fans. And by the way, we been running women's models dating back the five thirty eight days for ten years now. It's something we've always taken seriously, right, you know, Okay, I'm going to make some broadstroke generalizations. Right, until fairly recently, the WNBA was not a very popular product and not making a lot of money. It did have a loyal fan base, and like the quality of the product is good. Certainly these players are spectacular players, right, But you know the reason why all these people were, like you know, Britney Griner who was detained in Russia, Right, it's because there was more money there than they were making from from the American sport where they might get paid. I mean it's kind of crazy, right, you talk about some of the best athletes in the world and they're like getting paid like, you know nothing, Yeah, some intern salary basically right. By the way, most sports leagues have like a rookie scale cap, right, where like you kind of are are restricted in your free agent negotiating power for some number of years. I don't know off handwo is you know in baseball it's six years of professional servitude, right or service time is how it's used. So there is a lot of like protection. So their combination thing, well, there's like there's protection of like the existing classes, right. Labor unions in sports tend to bargain in ways that fuck over young players and protect the veterans, which in some ways is like and I'm you know, generally whatever, I think. I'm a free country. People should form menions if they want to think they've done benefited people in some cases and maybe not in others. Right, I'm just saying empirically, in sports, what happens is they tend to protect the veterans, the aging stars, whereas they deny younger players the right to have full bargaining power. Right, Younger players are subject to a draft, and then they in most sports, do not make their market salaries or particularly close to it until they're several years in. Right, they might say that, uh, well, we're actually doing a player a service by developing him. It is true that like a bad a young player in the nw and the NBA is like is pretty bad. Right, So on, so on one hand, you have like a restriction of supply problem which is formulated by you know, you know, unions that maybe don't care as much about these younger players. And also, like from the league standpoint, they're probably kind of indifferent toward this. Because one thing I've learned having built basketball protection systems, and I haven't done it well, have done the team ratings for women. I have done player ratings for women. Right, in general, if you're a nineteen year old twenty year old playing in the NBA, you're pretty bad, right. I imagine the same is true for the WNBA, And generally speaking, from age eighteen to twenty two is when you do a lot of your physical maturation when you become an adult. In other ways too, maybe it's a little bit different. For do women hit puberty earlier than they do. Maybe it's a little bit different, right.
It is, so everything you're saying though, should apply to men and women, right in terms of the unions protecting older players all of that.
So one thing, they're probably a few players who you know, if you're making whatever, like sixty thousand dollars a year in the wa and maybe maybe you run an ad and local subway chain or something. Right, So on the one hand, like then maybe the college experience is better if you're playing it like a South Carolina or a Yukon or an Iowa or a usc you know, maybe the college experience is actually better. It's it's probably also like less demand for your services, right, But yeah, I'm surprised there hasn't been more.
Yeah, because that seems like that seems like a very paternalistic argument, right, like let them have the choice, Like, if the college experience is better, then let them stay in college. But let them also have the same choice as their male counterparts, which is to leave early. Now, one of the things that I heard when I, you know, started researching this a little bit is that speaking about paternalism, that there was an argument made that you know, women need the degree more than men do. So force them basically to finish college because they will thank you for it later, because they'll, you know, they'll be lucky that they have an alternate career to fall back on, because this isn't this is probably not going to work out. And look, I understand that that like technically might be might be the case, but I once again, you know, I think that there should be you should be able to make that choice. So one of my closest friends was a professional dancer, right, a professional athlete, didn't go to college, right, didn't finish college and danced full time. You know, you know her as well, ended up after you know, finishing her dance career, going to Columbia and finishing a degree, writing a novel and becoming you know, an incredibly successful entrepreneur, jewelry designer, all these wonderful things. But she did that afterwards because she never went to college because she was a professional athlete. So it's not like, if you you know, leave at the age of nineteen or twenty to go play basketball, oh my god, you can never finish college. Right. I think a lot most colleges would be thrilled to have a professional athlete come back to finish their degree, because that's you know, it's not like you're closing off that option, you're not precluding it. And I think that you know, so that argument is not doesn't suffice. And so it does seem like there are these vested interests, as there often are when there's something so crazy, right, when there's something that doesn't make sense, usually it's because there are some old, vested interests that don't want it to change. And so what you were saying about unions about protecting older players, about kind of enshrining that that to me kind of makes more sense than oh, we're doing this for the good of the players, because that seems like a disingenuous argument at best.
No, look, I mean you have you know, the other risk is that you get some if you you know, talk to college basketball players men, they'll sit now I'm talking to them personally. If you read interviews with them, right, they're like, look, I can't take the chance that I get like injured, right and therefore have no career at all. You know, USC's best player just tore her acl in there around thirty two win last night, right, and you know this is a long recovery and like if you have that happen after you sign your kind of like rookie contract, then like that gives you more protection, right.
Yeah, so in some ways it's better if.
You can, like goodn to play professionally, and the professional league and the NCAA are kind of like, I mean, I guess it's not really the NCAA's fault, right, but the league is supposed to represent women's basketball, is kind of denying you a professional existence. I mean, it's kind of fucked up, right, Somebody should sue. Somebody sue the NBA.
Yeah, somebody should sue.
Yeah, no, it is un American.
Well no, it actually it is kind of fucked up that you are just unilaterally denied the opportunity to do this, and you know you you should have you should have the choice. You should be able to make a living however you want. And these days we have so many people arguing that, oh, well, college degrees aren't even what they used to be. You don't even need one, you know, Peter Tiele paying people money not to go to college. And yet here we are right that finish your college degree before you can play basketball professionally. I mean, it just it makes absolutely zero sense.
Yeah, if you're good enough to be, uh, you know the WNBA, right, one of the one hundred and two hundred best players in the world, And like, yeah, I mean that's more viable than a college degree. Absolutely it is. It's more unique, and like you build life skills, and absolutely it is, and we build.
And you can always and you can always go back and ghetto college degree later if you want, and then you'll be a former WNBA with a college degree. Right. I think that's the kind of experience that you can't duplicate, whereas a college degree is actually quite easy to duplicate in a lot of different ways. So yes, let's I think that you and I agree on this. WNBA, get your shit together. This is not a good rule.
All right.
Well, let's see what happens next week. I don't think the WNBA rules will change, but maybe maybe I will be redeemed in our bracket competition. And if not, Nate, I'm going to have a survey of best burgers in both New York and Vegas, depending on where we are, and then we can pick a fun dinner whoever wants.
Risky business is hosted by me, Nate Silver.
And Me Maria Kannakovin.
The show was a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabel carter or A. Social producer is Gabriel hunter Chen. Sally Helm is our editor. Our engineer is Sarah Bruger. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
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