What A Day - Boeing 737 Max, NCAA Fat Stacks

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

The NCAA votes to start the process of allowing college athletes to get money while they get an education. We get presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s take on the news.   Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg faces the Senate Commerce Committee to answer questions about two crashes involving the 737 Max, and what his company could’ve done to prevent them.  And in headlines: the House votes to recognize the Armenian genocide, Prince loved Panda, and a Texas highway runs green with guacamole.

It's Wednesday, October 30th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, the Arrested Development seasons one through three of News Podcasts. I'm recording this entire show in full blue paint. On today's show, the NCAA clears the way for college athletes to get paid. Boeing CEO faces a day of tough questions from Congress and then some headlines. The NCAA Board of Governors voted on Tuesday to start the process of allowing college athletes to make money off their name, image, and likeness.

Things like endorsement deals, being paid to sign autographs, and appearing in video games. Basically, they can be influencers now, and I don't mean that to be reductive. They will literally be making money off of their influence. Some athletes have been pushing for this for a very long time, arguing that they should be compensated for the value that they add to their schools. Yeah, they've been saying, you know, we're doing a full-time job in addition to going to school and should be compensated in some form for doing that. Okay, so the NCAA made this announcement, which is a huge reversal from their previous stances. At this point, what do we know about how the NCAA is going to implement this? That's the big question. And the devil is definitely going to be in the

details on all of this going forward. The NCAA for now says it's going to continue studying the issue until April 2020 and seeing how the landscape changes legislatively between now and then. So kicking the can down the road for a little while longer. And then at that point, Divisions 1 through 3

are supposed to create new rules no later than January 2021. So in essence, this is an announcement of an announcement. We have meta stuff. Yeah, we have a plan to have a plan. What we do know, though, is that the NCAA specifically made clear that athletes are not going to be paid for playing or performance. So this is exclusively stuff that's on the outside of that. Like we mentioned autographs, jerseys, you know, you get a cool

shoe deal, etc. Got it. Up until this point, the NCAA has allowed athletes to be compensated with scholarships. You know, basically, you get to go to college for free. That's enough. What prompted the NCAA to change the rules? They got pressured. There's been pressure relentlessly from the outside on this. States are starting to take action already. Now, the NCAA has banned the profiting off of likenesses by making this argument over the years that players are functionally amateurs in their role as athletes on college campuses. And in some senses, then they should be protected from the kind of shadier potential sides of the professional sports world. If you're a freshman basketball player at UK,

and some guy comes up to you on the basketball court and he's like, I have this crazy contract for you. You're going to make a bajillion dollars and you sign it and you don't realize at the end that it said, you know, agent guy from entourage is going to take 95% of this. You're kind of in a bind. But the downside of that has been that everyone else in these college programs is getting paid on a scale of a professional operation. Yeah, like Coach Cal is rich. Exactly. Rich.

Every coach has like the nicest house in town and is wearing crazy three-piece suits to all the games. Yeah. And the players have never been the beneficiaries of things like that. So last month, California passed a law that will let college athletes sign sponsorship deals, get paid for autographs, among other things, beginning in 2023. One of the big drivers of that, big supporters, LeBron James of Space Jam 2 fame, primary advocate had Governor Gavin Newsom of California sign the bill on his show, The Shop. This is the number one reason why we've created this platform, to be able to have moments like this where we got the governor of California signing a bill to allow athletes in college. Let's do it, man. That's the coolest Gavin

has ever sounded. Yeah, he definitely got daps on the street after that for the first time. Yesterday, LeBron tweeted in response to the NCAA news, quote, it's a beautiful day for all college athletes going forward from this day on. Thank you guys for allowing me to bring more light to it. So is it a beautiful day for athletes? Well, big picture, it kind of can be. College athletes, at some point, if these rules are brought to fruition and understood and put

in place, are going to be able to make some money. But all of that is still being decided. The other kind of interesting thing that I read are concerns about who exactly is going to benefit from this when these rules of the road are made. For example, Stanford women's basketball coach Tara Vanderveer thinks that the overall push to end these kinds of restrictive rules that we've been talking about could end up first favoring and maybe in the long term favoring football and men's basketball programs over female athletes. Yeah. And I mean, considering that female athletes are often and historically have been compensated beneath their male counterparts in the same sports. Seems pretty likely. I'd put my money on that too. Yeah. Yeah.

And especially if they don't really clarify how this is all going to work and if there are different rules in different places. The other interesting thing that I was reading is this point that there are a ton of college athletes who are not going on to professional leagues. So sometimes besides specific options that might exist, G League, etc, and so forth, this might be the only chance that they have to actually have those autographs, those endorsement deals, all this kind of stuff from playing the sport that they love to play. And so that makes it really a situation where it's harder for them to wait.

Yeah. So for people who are in college now, time is of the essence. Yeah. And the other thing is, there's a lot of moving parts in all of this at a ton of different levels. Independent of what the NCAA is doing, in at least 10 different states, lawmakers are considering bills that are similar to the one that passed in California. You also have something happening at the federal level in Congress. And even presidential candidates are starting to talk about it on the campaign trail. At least two Democratic candidates, Senator Cory Booker and Andrew Yang, are actually out with plans about specifically how to make sure that student athletes get paid. We actually got a chance to talk to Yang a little bit earlier about the NCAA decision. Here's some of what he had to

say. We can't praise the NCAA too much because they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't feel like legislators were getting ahead of them on it. It also doesn't solve the fundamental inequities because we're talking about a billion dollar business and an industry where coaches and athletic directors are getting paid millions of dollars while the student athletes risk life and limb every night they're out there. Yeah, and for all those reasons listed above, including what Yang was saying, the National College Players Association, a nonprofit that advocates for expanded income and rights for college athletes, said that the decision today from the NCAA was largely inconsequential. NCAA revenue reached an estimated $1 billion in the 2016 to 2017 school year. Right.

I mean, it is a fully professional operation. So we'll have to see how much money actually starts flowing to athletes as these changes begin to take shape. And now to some ads. Today's sponsor is Babbel, the language learning app that will get you speaking a new language with confidence. You know, I think it's important to learn another language because subtitles are kind of a pain in the ass. It's true. Well, with Babbel, you can speak a new language with confidence. Babbel teaches real-life conversations.

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he'll testify before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The topic at hand is two fatal crashes involving the company 737 Max plane that left 346 people dead. Akilah, so this is the first time a representative from Boeing has testified about the Lion Air crash that happened a year ago yesterday and the Ethiopian Airlines crash from the spring of this year. Both involve the now grounded Boeing 737 model. What were the big moments that stuck out from the hearing? Well, as to be expected, it was super intense. Family members of crash victims were there. They held up large photos of the deceased.

Mullenberg did his part. He was somber and apologetic when he started off the morning. Here's a clip from his opening statement. On behalf of myself and the Boeing company, we are sorry, deeply and truly sorry. The senators, as they do in these types of hearings, each took their opportunity to slam Boeing CEO. We've got a couple clips. Here's a bit of Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth. Time and again, this is my frustration. Boeing has not told the whole truth to this committee and to the families and to the people looking at this. And here's Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut.

Those pilots never had a chance. These loved ones never had a chance. They were in flying coffins as a result of Boeing deciding that it was going to conceal MCAS. That's the software that malfunctioned in these 737 planes. When it came to questioning Mullenberg about the crashes and the faulty flight software that caused them, a lot of the day centered around who at Boeing knew what and when. Right. That seems to be the main focus. So what did we find out in terms of that? I'm going to attempt to tell you. It was a lot of information, but we sort of sussed it out. Employees at Boeing knew that there was a problem with the plane software before both of those crashes. Internal messages between the test pilots confirmed this. Mullenberg says he found out about those messages and issues with the software prior to the second crash.

So that was in March of this year. That was the Ethiopian Airlines crash. And that's after the first one. That's right. But Mullenberg didn't tell the FAA until a few weeks ago about those messages. Meanwhile, pilots had no idea about the new software and its glitches since Boeing removed mention of it from their official operator's manual. If it sounds confusing, which I'm sure it does, confusion only helps Boeing in terms

of its messaging around who's to blame in these crashes. Ironically, Boeing stock went up yesterday after the hearing. How is that even possible? So Boeing's goal is to acknowledge the tragedy here, of course, and to renew trust in the company. But what is the end goal for Congress? Obviously, there's a sort of righteous indignation. Is it for Congress to hold the company legally accountable to start making regulations for things like this? Yeah, both of those things are totally the goal. Boeing is currently in several civil lawsuits and criminal investigations.

So people involved in those suits watched the hearings yesterday. They're definitely going to be listening today. It's a pretty big focus. And I think most importantly, Boeing is interested in getting those planes back in the air. And the FAA is ultimately going to be the ones to decide if they trust Boeing to do that. So what happens in these testimonies is actually incredibly crucial for that decision. The other big thing that came up in the hearing and hopefully will be an area that Congress looks into further is the relationship between the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing and whether or not it's a little too cozy. And lastly, when companies

fuck up, there's always a question about whether the CEO should keep their job or be removed or how that will go. In this case, obviously, Mullenberg still has his job, though the company took away his board chairmanship earlier this month. By the way, he made $23 million last year. We're expecting more news out of this today as Mullenberg takes questions from the House. We'll keep you updated on any new developments. And now let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Actor and comedian John Witherspoon has died.

You know him from roles in Friday, the Boondocks animated series, The Proud Family, Black Jesus, and so much more. You win some, you lose some. But you live, you live the fight of the day. He was 77. Rest in peace. The House voted on Tuesday to recognize the killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I as a genocide. The move has already been condemned by Turkey, who denies the genocide and reports a much lower death toll. But for millions of Armenian Americans, the House vote comes as a relief and symbolizes that their country is finally recognizing the pain their people endured. In impeachment news, House investigators heard their first testimony from a current White House official this Tuesday.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, confirmed much of what we know about President Trump's call with Ukrainian President Zelensky and said that he, quote, did not think the call was proper. Weird, because I heard it was perfect. Vindman added that the White House transcript of Trump's Zelensky call omitted crucial words and phrases, including an explicit mention by Zelensky of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Joe Biden's son, Hunter. Too long, didn't read the transcript.

It was a sham script. Rock legend Prince's tell-all memoir, The Beautiful Ones, came out on Tuesday of this week. Choice excerpts include Prince laughing his ass off at a private screening of Kung Fu Panda 3 and revealing that he really didn't like the music of Ed Sheeran and Katy Perry. After reading the book, Katy Perry might feel as blue as her character from the 3D Smurfs movie, which is a movie Prince might have liked as much as Kung Fu Panda 3. And here's something weird.

A box trailer flipped over in Texas on Tuesday, spilling 40,000 pounds of avocado and leading officials to shut down the highway for several hours. If you ask me, this is why millennials can't afford to own homes anymore. They spend all their money on avocado trucks that flip over on the highway. And those are the headlines. also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash newsletters. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's why I love Kung Fu Panda 3. What a day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.