Today, Explained - Flagrant Foul

Episode Date: March 23, 2018

The FBI is investigating over twenty colleges for paying athletes under the table, reigniting the age-old debate: Should college athletes be formally paid? Sean Rameswaram talks to former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon and The Nation’s Dave Zirin, who says a lot of this conversation comes down to race. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy Friday! Most people move on the weekend, so this weekend think about moving to the cloud. Google can help. Check out the Google Cloud Platform Weekly Podcast. You can find it and subscribe at g.co slash gcp podcast. I know very, very little about college basketball. I know Drake loves Kentucky. I know things get really exciting in March. And I know every year around this time, everyone reopens the books on whether or not we should pay college athletes.

But this year is a little different. College basketball is still trying to navigate what to do following a bombshell report from Yahoo detailing potential violations from some of the top teams and players in the sport. It's the biggest scandal in the history of college basketball, maybe the biggest scandal in the history of college sports. The FBI is involved. This is just the beginning. The FBI is looking into a whole mess of improper gifts given to athletes.

And these gifts are a problem because they violate the NCAA's own rules around something called amateurism. As in, college athletes are amateurs, or as the NCAA calls them. Student athletes, that's what the NCAA was created for 100 years ago, and that's what we keep our attention on. Mark Emmert is the president of the NCAA.

The game changer for a young person in life is that they get an education. If we're making sure that the focus is on graduating from a university, that's the real game changer for them. Sounds super noble, right? The only problem is all that money. March Madness now brings in over a billion dollars in TV ad revenue, trumping the NFL postseason.

And that's just from one month of college basketball. And none of that billion goes to college athletes. All they get is scholarships. Or at least that's what the NCAA says. At the same time... There currently is an economy governing NCAA basketball and football, the two big revenue-producing sports. But it's an underground economy. It's a gutter economy.

It's made up of favors. But it's in a very corrosive and corrupt way. So if everyone's getting paid under the table, why can't college athletes just get a check? Let me just have you say who you are again. Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation magazine. Every March Madness, we have the same conversation about paying college athletes, but this one feels a little different

because there's an FBI probe too. Yes. Now what this FBI report lays bare is that gutter economy. Yeah. Little payments, big payments from 50 bucks to $100,000. The fact that people are seeing that this economy exists has led to more mainstream voices lending their voice to tactics that I believe are the only tactics that will ever actually produce real change. People like Jalen Rose and Jay Williams, both of whom work for ESPN.

For me, the collegiate system has always represented what I call indenture servitude. Playership boycott. Did the FBI just start caring or something? Because they could have noticed this like 20 years ago, right? People usually have two minds about this. Like, shouldn't the FBI be finding other things to do? And at the same time, it's usually this federal government kind of intervention with the heavy bat, if you will,

that actually wakes people up to say, whoa, something is going on here that's more nefarious than buying a kid a meal when you go on a recruiting visit. This is why we keep having this never-ending cascade of scandals. It's because you've got to think of the NCAA as a cartel. And you've got to think of Mark Emmert, the head of the NCAA, who heads this nonprofit and makes $2 million a year, as the Tony Soprano of this situation. And so the only response is for Tony to be stronger and have a stronger hand. But that doesn't make what's going on any less criminal.

It just brings more peace to the neighborhoods. I woke up this morning, got myself a gun. Mama always said I'd be the chosen one. To grasp how unfair the situation in college sports can be, you gotta hear what happened to Ed. My name is Ed O'Bannon. I am in sales at Finley Toyota here in Henderson, Nevada. Ed sells cars now, but back in the 90s, he was a big deal college basketball player. The Bruins did have what it took to win the game, and his name was Ed O'Bannon. He was the star of the 1995 UCLA Bruins championship team. He was named the most outstanding player of the final four.

And years after leaving UCLA, he was immortalized in ones and zeros. I was at a friend's house. It was a normal day, regular day. You know, I remember being out in the front yard playing catch with one of his sons. And then, you know, in conversation, he says, hey, we were playing, you know, this video game last night, man, and you were on it. You know, you want to check it out? I was like, hell yeah, let's see it. When was this?

When did this happen? This was in 08. So you played college basketball in the mid-90s, right? And then in 2008, you're hanging out at a friend's house. And he's like, hey, I was just playing a video game that you were on. What? Yep. What was your reaction? he's like, hey, I was just playing a video game that you were on. What? Yep. What was your reaction?

That's crazy, man. I was excited. You know, I wanted to see it. I mean, I grew up in the age where video games were just coming out. You know, my best friend down the street had Atari. Yeah. My brother and I had Intellivision. We always played Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Nice.

You know, to be on a video game was a dream come true. So did you go in and sit down and play? You know what? I didn't play. I did sit down and had an adult beverage. And we just sat there and watched this kid play this video game. And we're underway. What's the drink you drink when you're sitting down

to watch some kid play you on a video game? Jack and Coke. Good to know. If that ever happens to me, I'll know what to pour. Get out of the way, baby. That was absolutely sensational. What was your reaction? What did you look like in the game?

You were like, oh, my God, it's a mirror image. Or was it kind of glitchy graphics or what? I was like, wow, you know, what i was like wow you know that's me you know he's bald-headed he's left-handed you know long arms skinny arms and he can shoot too yeah that's me and you were you were happy about it oh yeah absolutely i was i was thrilled it was i thought it was really cool and then my friend kind of leans over, you know, kind of nudges me with his elbow and says, you know how much we pay for this? 60 bucks. You know how much you got?

And before I could answer, he was like, zero. When he said it, I thought it was funny. But in the midst of that laughter, it kind of stopped, you know, and I thought about it and I was like, damn, I didn't get anything. Hell, they didn't even call me, you know, to ask me. You know, my mind was racing. I just couldn't, I couldn't believe it. I was just like, here I am in my mid-30s and they're still making money off of my, you know, off of my face, you know, off of me. Did you have another Jack and Coke?

I needed one, that's for sure. I didn't get another one, but I probably should have. A couple weeks later, I get a phone call from a close friend of mine and mentor, Sonny Vaccaro, and he says, I'm looking to sue the NCAA for the mistreatment of college athletes. I said, wow, Mr. Vaccaro. A couple weeks ago, I was at a friend's house, and I told him that story. And he was like, oh, my goodness. He said, you'd be perfect to be the lead plaintiff in all of this.

It just so happens your mentor is thinking about suing the NCAA, and you're there waiting with the perfect lawsuit. Yeah, that was exactly how it was. Why were they so excited? Why did they so desperately want to sue the NCAA? Because they recognize this social injustice. That sounds bigger. It is bigger. There are civil rights that are being violated here. When I was going to UCLA, I worked full time on the weekend. Did you work to go through school or were you set?

Did you have loans? How was your like financial situation? First of all, we couldn't work. Being on scholarship, it's against NCAA rules. So I did not work. But honestly, I'm not sure that I had enough time to work. When it came to practice and workouts and classes, There would be no time to sleep. It was fun.

It was a blast. But at the same time, it wasn't all roses. A lot of times your classmates would say, oh, I'm hungry. Everything's closed. I have no money. So you sit around and eat Doritos and fall asleep. I remember going to basketball games when I was at UCLA at Pauley Pavilion, and it looked like the school made some good money off of those games. Did you ever feel sort of compromised when you saw how much money was being made off of your talent? I didn't, you know,

necessarily comprehend, you know, the amount of money. I didn't comprehend even that I was playing for free. You know, it was a pride in the school and wearing the jersey thing. I was young and all I wanted to do was play basketball for UCLA. So, you know, I would notice that there would be 15,000 people at our, you know, at our basketball game. But, you know, when I would get home, there would be nothing to eat. I noticed those things, but it's the system. That's just the way that it is. If a system like this has been going strong for over a century, how do you change it? Ed tried with his lawsuit. He got a favorable decision

saying the NCAA's rules aren't fair, but college athletes still aren't getting paid. So what would giving them a fair cut of the profits look like? That's in a minute on Today Explained. Quick word from our sponsors over at Google. The Google Cloud Platform Weekly Podcast is where Thank you. from security to machine learning and more. It's where you'll hear from technologists all across Google about trends and cool things happening with their technology. Learn more and subscribe to the podcast at g.co slash GCP podcast. This is Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos-Firum, and this is NCAA President Mark Emmert with a question.

What's the core function of intercollegiate athletics? Why do these games exist? And this is King James with an answer. And I've always heard the narrative, like they get a free education, but you guys are not bringing me on campus to get an education. You guys are bringing me on it to help you get to a Final Four or to a national championship. So Dave, why do you think college athletes should be paid? Because they are workers and their labor funds a huge portion of the modern university. They exist as a way in the current collegiate landscape to produce revenue and produce money that otherwise would

not exist. And when you hear college presidents speak about these revenue-producing sports, they bemoan the existence of profit and money and all of these things that are corroding amateurism. Yet at the same time, they pay more and more money in this arms race for the best coaches, the best athletic directors. And how's the NCAA doing itself? Is it pulling in a billion yet? Yeah, it crossed a billion this year. And there's so much money in the system. It really is like the Montgomery Burns, Mr. Smithers, where they're throwing money at each other. Money fight! They have nothing really to do with it except plow it into even more expensive facilities.

I've been to NBA and NFL facilities, and I've been to the top college facilities. A place like the University of Alabama is nicer than the training facilities for the Seattle Seahawks. These are huge shifts. One of the things that I say to folks a lot, just to get them to wrap their minds around the amounts we're talking about and how much this has changed, is to look at a school like Clemson. They won a national championship in 1982, and their coach was a guy named Danny Ford, and he made $50,000. The coach right now, Dabo Sweeney, before huge bonuses for making bowl games, etc. $7 million a year. It's wildly unfair that while there have been so much changes in terms of the place of college sports in this country,

that the situation for the athlete is largely unchanged. All right, let's, can we run through some of the arguments against paying college athletes? So first off, that it could ruin competition. You know, similar arguments were made with free agency in both Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, that this would destroy competitive balance because players would only gravitate to a few teams. And instead, by any measure, statistical measure, like since free agency, there's been more diversity as opposed to the Yankees winning every single year. It's been much more spread out as teams have been able to openly bid for

players on the open market. Argument two, what about scholarships? Why isn't getting a free ride enough? All right, so they are already getting paid then. And when people make that case, they say, well, look how much college costs now. Look how expensive it is. $40,000, $50,000 a year at some schools. That only makes the case more clear. Like, okay, if their value is worth $200,000, then there is a value to their labor. And if there is a value to their labor, why does it only need to be expressed in that way? What this FBI case shows, again, I just got to pound this point home, is that the money is clearly there. I mean, and players are already being paid

in all sorts of ways. So why not make it above board and honest? Okay, last argument. What about this idea of amateurism that turning college basketball or football into the pros would take the magic out of the game or something? Oh, amateurism. Yeah, it's a great idea. It'd be great if you could find some because it currently doesn't exist. I'm for amateurism too. Where do you find it? Your

local swimming pool? Your kid's rec league? Great. Love amateurism. College sports? That ain't amateurism. I coached my son's fourth grade basketball team this year. That was amateurism. People doing it for the love of it. Nobody's getting paid. That's not what the NCAA is. But you know what, Dave? I don't think the head of the NCAA agrees with you. If you're going to hire someone to play football for you,

why would you want them to be a student? If you're going to hire someone to wash dishes in the cafeteria, why would you want them to be a student? I wash dishes. I was a student. Yeah. I mean, there are so many relationships that people have with their colleges on a school. This would be no different.

I mean, Upton Sinclair was writing critiques of the NCAA in the 1920s. W.E.B. Du Bois was decrying the influence of college sports 100 years ago. I mean, these aren't new critiques. The only thing that's new is the money and how it exposes how corrupt these institutions are. Dave, you talk about all these famous writers like Upton Sinclair and W.E.B. Du Bois writing about this a hundred years ago. But, you know, there's also this Eric Cartman in the room. You have some mighty strong looking workers here, sir. South Park did a whole episode about this. Now, when we sell their likeness for video games,

how do we get around paying for our slaves, student athletes then? That episode was not subtle. It was about race. And there's this Washington Post ABC News poll that backs Cartman up. It actually says that most Americans think that college athletes shouldn't be paid. But if you dig deeper, it suggests that most white Americans think they shouldn't be paid, while most people of color think they should. Not surprising, because we're talking about basketball and football, and those are the only two sports that are centered around black labor. It's the organized theft of black wealth. Because when you're talking about the billions and billions of dollars produced by these institutions,

and yet these players, not only do they not make anything, but their communities aren't able to get any of the benefits of the fact that they happen to have produced a one in a million athlete who's able to play a sport at one of the highest levels. I mean, imagine working your whole life and being able to play for a top school, yet still not being good enough to play in the NBA. Right. And having that not be rewarded, even though you've just put 10, 12 years of your life into attaining these certain set of skills, skills that produce wealth, and yet it's not wealth for you.

They take advantage of the fact that so many of these athletes are in precarious positions that, you know, we talked before about strikes and boycotts, precisely because of where they're from socioeconomically. They have very little margin for doing that. What if a team like UCLA just decided, you know what, we're not going to wait for the NCAA, we're going to pay all our basketball players, what would happen? I mean, they could lose their membership in the NCAA and lose their ability to play. I mean, what it would take would be an entire league say, this is who we're going to

be right now. And if that happened, if 12 teams, say, started paying all of their players, would there be this incredible inequity like we see in professional sports of the best players getting paid way more than the lesser players? Yeah, you would see those things, absolutely. And what that would replicate, Frank, would be the current system. Alabama already gets the best football players. Duke already gets the best football players. Duke already gets the best basketball players. And those two teams also pay their coaches the highest amount. I mean,

why do the coaches get all the benefits of the free market and the players don't? You know, that might have to change. You know, then that raises the question of unionization. It raises the question of collective bargaining. And those things, which I would argue would be positive developments, are undoubtedly seen by the NCAA. And we know they see those as negative developments, even though these are student athletes trying to exercise what they've learned in class to better their situation as athletes. All of a sudden, all of the poetic songs about the glory of the student-athlete and the amateur ideal, they go out the window. Yeah, it doesn't sound like you've got too

much love for that ideal of college ball. Not too much, even though I love the sport. I mean, it's the ugly wrapping paper around a beautiful game. Dave Zirin writes about sports for the nation. Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The Unstoppable Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Noam Hassenfeld, Bridget McCarthy, and Luke Vanderplug produce the show. Afim Shapiro is our engineer, and his son Harvey Shapiro rides his bike to school every day.

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