Today, Explained - The right to sell out

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

California is going to let college athletes make money from sneaker deals and commercials. Will the rest of the country follow suit? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Basketball's back. LeBron James lost his first game of the season to Toronto's adopted son Kawhi Leonard, but it doesn't matter. He's still making something like 92 million dollars this season. Some of that money is his salary from the LA Lakers, but most of it is for his likeness, his image in ads, in video games, the dream of Space Jam 2 that he's making a reality. We're the Monstars. That dream is why LeBron James skipped playing college ball and went straight to the NBA.

And he talked about that decision on his HBO series, The Shop, recently. Part of the reason why I went to the NBA is to get my mom out of the situation that she was in. I couldn't have done that if I would have stepped on a college campus. I mean, here's the fame, but then there's no compensation. It's so crazy. People are like, oh, you must be so rich.

And I'm like, you must not know that it's CAA, right? I graduated in 2004. I mean, we're talking about 10 years later and they're still making money off of us. The Shop is normally a conversation between athletes, musicians, and actors, but in this episode a different kind of guest showed up. The gig's up. California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Billions and billions of dollars goes to these universities, goes to these colleges. Billion plus revenue to the NC2A and the actual product, the folks that are putting everything on the line, are getting nothing. Newsom wasn't just there to bask in the shadow of LeBron James, though. When you put pen to paper right now, what's this going to change and what's it going to do? It's going to change college sports for the better by having now the interests, finally, of the athletes on par with the interests of the institutions. Now we're rebalancing that power arrangement.

All right, well, let's do it. That's all you ready? Let's do it, man. All right. You see that? You see that right there? That's Gov's signature right there. Newsom sat next to LeBron

and signed the Fair Pay to Play Act into law. And when it goes into effect in 2023, California's college athletes will be able to do a whole bunch of things they never could before. Depending on who you talk to, this is either the biggest fundamental change to college athletics in decades or a relatively minor administrative, you know, alteration. Matt Brown, SB Nation. California Senate Bill 206 allows for student athletes in California, all of the NCAA member institutions from major schools in the Pac-12,

like your Stanford's or UCLA's, to much smaller schools, your Fresno State's or your Pacific's. It allows students to be able to monetize their likeness without penalty from the school or the NCAA. So theoretically, now that this law has been passed, if you're a basketball player at Pacific and a car dealership in Stockton wants to use your image in a car dealership ad, the NCAA can't stop you. And NCAA current bylaws say you can't do that or you'll lose your amateurism status. So there's going to be a conflict now between California state law and NCAA bylaws. Is California in a league of its own here?

It was until after the bill was passed. And then we've already seen a pretty substantial copycat effect across the country. We have New York and Florida, South Carolina, Illinois, all over the country. a lot of lawmakers are looking at passing similar laws in part because they don't want their students to be at a recruiting disadvantage. And I think in part because if California has done it, that that shows that there's an appetite for, you know, passing this similar kind of law. So already within just a week or so, you know, close to a third of the U.S. population is covered by a state that's at least looking at passing similar legislation and more are likely to come. How's the NCAA navigating this sort of wave of laws that are saying that we're going to change how we compensate college athletes across the country?

Not well. If you ask a senior NCAA administrator or maybe an athletic director or a university president that's been there for a long time, a lot of them are treating this law like the opening of the seventh seal of the apocalypse. The NCAA has sent a letter to the governor of California. In the letter, the NCAA calls the Fair Pay to Play Act harmful and unconstitutional, adding that it would, quote, upend the balance of national competition in college sports. And the head of the NCAA is saying there's no meaningful distinction between a third party paying a player and a university paying a player. And then you're just going to have regular free agency and it's going to be this commercialism run amok kind of thing. And schools really don't want that because this current system gives them a lot of power to control the money that comes in and it requires donors who are interested in really good athletes going to their alma maters to give the money to

the school rather than to the players directly, which could theoretically happen if likeness rights become liberalized all over the country. But for the time being, you've got this conflict between the California law and the NCAA rules, and other states, I imagine, have similar conflicts. How are they going to deal with that in just the short term? Yeah, that's going to be the interesting question here, because the NCAA, the message has been pretty universal. They don't want to have 50 different states with 50 different regulations. So what we're going to have is either a federal law that supersedes all these state laws, and we have two different Republicans right now who are in the process of advancing legislation to do just that, or the NCAA would try to strike up some sort of compromise with either

California or other lawmakers to have some kind of national policy, one that would probably be a more limited likeness rights marketplace than what California is proposing. So is California sort of trying to take the same strategy with college athlete compensation as it did with, say, you know, emissions standards by trying to sort of lead the pack and say, here's a different set of rules and now the federal government will have to catch up? Is that what's going on here? Yeah, I think that's a really great way of putting it.

You know, California is so big. It has some of the largest athletic brands. It produces more high-level basketball and football players than almost anywhere else in the country. It has the clout and the scale to be able to do something like this. You know, if the first state to propose this sort of legislation was Delaware,

with just two, you know, relatively low-importance athletic programs. Sorry, Joe Biden. Congratulations, man. You beat the Tar Heels. That's a hell of a... Congratulations. I really mean it. It really is really cool. So, you know, if the first state was Delaware, the NCAA might have been able to muscle them out. But you can't really do that to UCLA and USC and Stanford and Cal and a slew of other high-performing mid-majors. So if California has been holding this card for a while, why is it playing it now? I think we're seeing a more politically activated group of student-athletes, you know, people who are more aware of this enormous gap between the amount of money that

these athletic departments are making. You're starving, but they're making billions. You got your jersey on. If you want to take your jersey and sell it to somebody, you can get in trouble for that. And it has your name on it and your sweat. It's crazy to me. What athletes are doing is work. It's tremendous work, but it is work. And I don't know if you understand it until you go through it. Like waking up at 6 a.m., going to weights, then going from there, basically minimal meals, going to class. Then from class to practice. Practice four to five hours a day.

And then after that, you have homework and more class. And then go to sleep and then rinse, repeat. Well, I can tell you from experience, I had negative 40 bucks in my account. And usually my account was in a negative more times than it was in a positive. You got to make decisions on whether you get gas for your car or whether you get the meal for the day. You know what? You got one of the two choices. I mean, we have Michigan and Ohio State and Texas near the top here bringing in over 200 million dollars a year for their athletic departments and an enormous time burden and risk for a football player. You know, you might only have a few years to be able to earn a living. Your coach is making $6 million. Your strength coach might be

making a half million dollars. There are seven other assistants who are making a half million dollars and you can't go to Chick-fil-A. I think that that gap has become so powerful that now there's even more movements to try and rectify that in some way. So how are college athletes feeling right now seeing all this change all at once? As you would expect, there's some real excitement, I think, from people who are currently playing college football or basketball. A lot of these kids understand

that they're probably not going to be able to cut a six-figure sneaker deal or a car dealership ad while they're in school, especially if they're at a smaller program. But almost everybody has some level of likeness rights, even if it's relatively small. If you're a college softball player, somebody would probably pay you to go to a softball camp and teach high school kids how to play softball. The fact that you are structurally required to kind of live in poverty

is unfair. And the idea that there might be a legislative remedy to that excites a lot of kids, even if they realize it might not come right away. Matt Brown is the author of What If? A closer look at college football's great questions. We spoke about paying college athletes, but these athletes want to get paid once they're done playing, too. I'm Sean Ramos for him. That's in a minute on today's plane. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. John Delore.

Is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up or press 1 for more options. Hey, John Delore, Sean Ramos for him. I know that you are the executive producer of the Paris Review podcast. I know that this is your baby. And in the middle of our show today, we are meant to promote the Paris Review podcast. So I was just calling you to figure out what exactly you wanted me to tell the people about your show. Is it just a bunch of people telling you how Paris is? Is it a critical assessment of Paris? Or is it more like an acclaimed podcast from the legendary literary

journal, The Paris Review, that is coming back for its second season, a brand new audio odyssey in which each episode blends intimate performances of Paris Review fiction, poetry, and also interviews with archival recordings and reenactments to create this totally immersive listening experience. I don't know if this season will feature Jason Alexander reading Philip Roth or Molly Ringwald reading rising fiction star Mary Terrier or Jenny Slate channeling Anne Sexton or archival audio from Toni Morrison and many other exciting literary voices, but I certainly hope that it does. And I really hope that you can listen

to season two of The Paris Review right now in Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. I bet you can. If you are satisfied with your message, press one to listen to your message. Press two to erase. To send your message with normal message, press 1. To listen to your message, press 2. To erase, to send your message

with normal delivery, press 1. To send your message with urgent delivery, press 2. Thank you, your message has been sent. Goodbye. The debate over paying college athletes in America has been around almost as long as college athletics in America. But the fight to change the pay grade has really ramped up in the past 30 years or so. I had moved on and they were still making money off of my likeness. Ed O'Bannon was the star of the 1995 UCLA basketball team, and he was named most outstanding player in the Final Four that year. But years after leaving UCLA, he lost his likeness. 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, and you want to check it out? I was like, you know, 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? Yes.

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? That's crazy, man. I was excited, you know? I wanted to see it.

I thought that that would be cool. I mean, I grew up in an age where video games were just coming out. You know, my best friend down the street had Atari. My brother and I had Intellivision. We always played Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. 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, I didn't play.

I did sit down and play? You know what I didn't play I did sit down and uh had an adult beverage and we just sat there and and watched him you know watch this kid play this video game. What's the drink you drink when you're sitting down to watch some kid play you on a video game? Uh 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 did you look like in the game? You're like, oh my God, it's a mirror image. Or was it kind of glitchy graphics or what? I was like, wow, you know, that's me. You know, he's ball-headed, he's left-handed, you know, long arms, skinny arms, and he can shoot too. Yeah, that's me. And you were happy about it?

Oh yeah, absolutely. 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 thirties 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, I didn't get another one, but I probably should have. So what happens next? A couple of 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 says, 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 the social injustice. That sounds bigger. It is bigger. There are civil rights that are being violated here.

How so? What have you been prevented from doing? I did not work. Being on scholarship, it's against NCAA rules. 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, you know, I'm hungry, everything's closed, I have no money. So you know, you sit around and eat Doritos and fall asleep.

You know, I would notice that there would be 10,000 people every night, 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. I didn't, you know, necessarily comprehend, you know, the amount of money. I didn't 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. That lawsuit that Ed was a part of after he saw himself in a video game years after he wore the jersey, ultimately he was part of a $60 million settlement.

Because thousands of players got paid, Ed got $15,000. It's a lot less money than he might have gotten if he'd been in control of his likeness all along. So, as he recently told CNN, Ed is all about California's Fair Pay-to-Play Act. California's in a really good position. They are changing the game. And from where we sit, we're extremely excited about it. This is Today Explained.