NCAA: Foul Play?

and on school to six. He'd never received the right help for an undiagnosed learning disability, but he'd managed to mask the problem. He may morized how certain words looked, cheated on tests, duck girls to do his homework, and he passed his college classes even though he couldn't read

the team playbook. And that that really hurt me because then I remember back when I was in grammar school, you know what I was told, And I just felt like that I am done when I was stupid, and that I would have the ability to learn or learn

how to read or write. The governing body of college sports, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, claims that education comes first, But how can that be true for players like Dexter Manly who go to college because they excel on the field and then leave utterly unprepared to do anything else. Welcome to Calling Bullshit, the podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what companies say they stand for and what they actually do, and what they would need to change

to practice what they preach. I'm your host, time onto you, and I've spent over a decade helping companies define what they stand for, their purpose and then help them to use that purpose to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot of companies and organizations today, there's still a pretty wide gap between word and deed. That gap has a name. We call it bullshit. But, and this is important, we believe that bullshit is a treatable disease.

So when the bullshit detector lights up, we're going to explore things that a company should do to fix it. In this episode, we're going to look at the n C Double A, the institution that shaped college sports into what they are today. The n C Double A says its purpose is to govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable, and sportsmanlike manner and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student athlete

is paramount. Man, what a mouthful. But lately there's been quite a bit in the news about a darker side of the n C Double A. We will hear argument this morning in case twelve National Collegiate Athletic Association versus Austin. Then double A has produced iconic matchups, launched professional sports careers, and made billions of dollars, but not for the students playing in these big games. Here is late with the sad. The n c a A didn't even allow schools to

offer athletes scholarships until nineteen fifty six. Before that, the only compensation for playing pride, and for decades, the n C Double A has had a long list of rules restricting payments to athletes that is finally starting to change. The Supreme Court has handed a massive victory to college

athletes in their efforts to receive fair compensation. The justices unanimously rejected the n double AS rules limiting benefits colleges can provide athletes things like laptops and science equipments or

postgraduate paid internships. Interestingly, the Court ruled that by limiting these educational benefits that the n c A would actually be violating antitrust laws because it would make it harder for schools to compete for athletes not about direct and thanks to a separate decision earlier this year, athletes can now earn money by endorsing products and businesses like the

local car dealership or pizza parlor. But while these changes are a big deal for players who have in many cases been forced to live in poverty, many people don't think they go far enough. A growing number of athletes and activists claimed the n C Double A is basically a cartel, fixing prices and using the unpaid labor of poor, mostly black and brown athletes to rake in billions. The n C Double A, on the other hand, says they're just trying to preserve the idea of amateur status while

helping student athletes get a college education. This is a complicated story, so let's start with a quick history of the debate. It all begins in back then, college football looked a lot different than it does today. Teams used a formation called the flying wedge, where the players linked arms in a V shape and sprinted down the field in one big mass, and many of them didn't even wear helmets. As you can imagine, a lot of people

got hurt. Eighteen players die in the nineteen o four season alone, and basically Teddy Roosevelt called in the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, which of course we're major football powers back then, and said, you figure out a way to clean this up, or I will shut down football. That's Joe No Sarah, co author of indentured the battle to end the exploitation of college athletes. You got rid of the flying wedge, and they started to allow the

forward pass. The next big turning point in n C Double A history came in ninety eight, after a series of sports scandals that involved bribes, gambling, and point shaving. Enter the Sanity Code. It forbade any form of merit pay to students in exchange for their services as athletes. In other words, they should not profit in any way. In nineteen fifty one, the n C Double A got its first full time leader. And this is where the

story gets really interesting. They think you have to understand about the n C A is it was almost toothless for fifty years, and it wasn't until the mid fifties that a guy named Walter Buyers took it over and turned it into a powerful, and bureaucratic and ruthless and you know, one step removed from the National Rifle Association. Buyers has been described as a force of nature, secretive, despotic,

and stubborn. And he got right to work doing two things, finding creative ways to monetize America's growing love affair with college sports and ruthlessly enforcing the Sanity Code, which meant

that athletes got none of that money. Today, the n C Double A is a money machine, generating and estimated nineteen billion dollars a year, and despite years of litigation until just this year, the players themselves, current and former, were barred from profiting from their name, image, and likeness for life, and they still aren't paid for the very

labor that makes that nineteen billion dollars possible. After three trips to the Supreme Court, after multiple athlete protests and lawsuits, after several attempts to organize the players and even unionize them to get a fair shake, the n C Double A maintains that the educational experience of the student athlete is paramount. So is that actually true or is that

just a bunch of bullshit? To get to the bottom of this, I called up Joe No Sarah, who, as you heard earlier, is the co author of Indentured, The Battle to End the Exploitation of College Athletes. Joe, welcome to calling bullshit. Thank you very much for being here today. Thanks for having me so. I loved your book. It was a real eye opener starting out. I think, like a lot of people, I had this image of the n c a. A is this hallowed organization that brings

joy to millions of people. There's this kind of mythic image of these student athlete warriors, both men and women, who get to go to college on a full ride and play their sport on the national stage while getting an amazing free education, and then graduate and go on to either a lucrative professional sports career or a career in their chosen field of study. How accurate would you say that picture is? Let me stop laughing. I think if we went and passed that description, every single piece

of it is wrong. Okay, so let's just say not very accurate. Yeah, it's an eye poppingly big business college sports. Can you talk a little bit about where that money comes from. Sure, the majority of it comes from TV contracts. That's where the real big money is. Just the college football playoffs alone. ESPN has a multibillion dollar contract to air what amounts to three games a season at the end of the season. The Big Ten not only has deals with you know, ESPN, they also have their own network,

so they generate money from advertising and from subscribers. But there's also sponsorships, selling the jerseys in the student union, there's all kinds of naming rights of the stadiums. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So who gets that money when it flows in? Mostly the schools do I mean, if you're the SEC, if you're the Southeastern Conference and you generate forty to fifty million per school through your TV contracts and other means,

you um parcel that out to the schools. Now, what the schools will say is that the money that is made from basketball and football is used to subsidize all the non revenue sports like softball and field hockey. It basically means two sports that are fundamentally played by African Americans are subsidizing lots of sports that are played by upper middle class white students. Absolutely. Some would say that's

not equitable. Yes, some would say some have said, okay, So the universities get the lion's share of this nineteen billion and they use it to build these massive, cathedral like facilities. A lot of it goes to the coaches. Some of the coaches salaries that are in your book, We're Crazy, Nick Saban seven million, Coach Achevski at Duke ten million. There's people on the staff of some of the universities, like the strength coaches are making three quarters

of a million dollars a year. And then there's the leadership of the n c A Mark Emmett. He makes two point seven million a year, and they're eight executives. They're making north of half a million dollars a year. So a lot of people doing really well off of this nineteen billion. What did the students get, the people actually responsible for generating all of this revenue. They get uniform that's something. They get training, they do get training,

that's real. They sort of kind of get an education. But the truth of the matter is that for many, many, many football and basketball players, that education is extremely substandard because the goal of the coach is to keep the player on the field, not to make sure he majors in something that's usable after college. To put it bluntly,

the players get screwed. Yeah, it feels like that. One of the statistics that jumped out at me was that of top level college athletes live below the poverty level, and as you've already pointed out, many of them come from poor families, many of them are people of color, and the highly paid coaches and n c A executives are mostly white. So this feels like essentially reverse affirmative action,

is the way I think about it. The players are often the poorest students on campus, and yet the ns amateurism rules have long been aimed at preventing college athletes from accepting money. That's what the whole goal was. So for instance, if a upper middle class white kid wants to go home for Thanksgiving, right, his parents just pay war and there's no violation because parents can do whatever

they want. Right. If a disadvantaged black kid wants to go cross country for Thanksgiving and his parents don't have the money, he can't go because anybody who would give him the money to make that trip would be putting him in violation of n c A rules and he would be suspended. So the n A basically says, we treat everybody the same. We don't want anybody to have money. That violates the principles of amateurism. But in effect, it affects the black kids a whole lot more than it

affects the white kids. In your book, you quote historian Taylor branch As comparing the n c A system too in quotes the plantation. What did he mean by that, Well, he means sort of the same thing that I mean by the title of my book, which is indentured, which is that they're under the thumb of the athletic department a coach. You know, if they don't play well, they can lose their scholarship and be sent back. They often wind up back on the street after their four years

are up. It's a system in which they have no power, or at least had no power until fairly recently. And so these players who are making no money are making all these white people, not all white people, if they're always administrators, these adults rich, which is definitely the whiff of the plantation. Absolutely, Joe, What is then, as rationale

for treating students this way? Let me back up one second, and just say this, The combination of the recent Supreme Court decision and the legislation in many states to allow players to make money on their name, image and likeness i e. Endorsements and signing autographs and that sort of thing is changing things radically and quickly, and the n c a A is trying to catch up. But let's make believe we're still back in the era when the n c a A. When it was their way or

the highway. Their rationale was that amateurism, that not paying players is what separated college sports from professional sports. It was kind of the secret sauce. And they would long argue that if players were ever paid, it would turn off the fans and people would stop going to the games, and it would destroy college sports. It seems to me that that is a testable proposition. Why hasn't anyone asked them to prove this? Well, that's what these court fights

have been about. Amateurism, they would say, is not the secret sauce. In fact, it's cartel like behavior that violates the antitrust laws, and its purpose is to deprive the

labor force of wages. So each side has their economists and in court over the last fifteen years, judges at every level, from the district court to the appeals court of the Supreme Court have all said that the arguments in favor of amateurism being something that is required to have college sports, they have all ruled at that as bogus and that in fact, what amateurism really is is

a violation of the United States antitrust laws. In June of one, the n C Double A dropped its rule prohibiting students from making money off their name, image, and likeness. That was a big win, but it wasn't the first. In two thousand and nine, there was another significant score for student athletes in the Supreme Court. O'Bannon versus the

n C Double A. That's quite the story. Ed O'Bannon, former n c A champion basketball player at u C l A. He's working at a Las Vegas card dealership, goes to a party and somebody says, my kid saw your image on a video game. So he goes and looks at the video game and sure enough, there's an avatar that looks exactly like him that has his number on the back. So of course his first instinct is, oh boy, this is kind of cool. But his second

instinct is, why aren't I getting paid for this? How can they use my name my image without paying me exactly, And that's what led to the verse truly important lawsuit O'Bannon versus n c a A that was back in two thousand and nine, and since then there's been a real shift in how the public thinks about the rights

of college athletes. Now jump ahead to twenty nine. California legislator named Nancy Skinners is at a Rotary Club luncheon and she's listening to an economist named Andy Schwartz who is giving a talk about the n c a A. And she thinks to herself, boy, this is awful. Somebody should do something about this. And then she thinks, hey,

I'm about to join the legislature. I could do something about this, right, So she files the bill that says universities in California cannot prevent or punish athletes for making money on their name, image, and likeness. And here's the amazing thing. In this polarized era that we live in, it passed unanimously. That's incredible, in the House and the Senate. And that really told you that things have changed. So then what happens, a bunch of other states say well, hell,

I'm not going to give California the advantage. We gotta have one too, or we're gonna lose recruits. And then the n c A says, hold on, everybody, let us figure this out, you know, just stop, and by then then has lost so much credibility that nobody is willing to do that. Understanding that this was a losing battle, the double A finally decided that they would simply allow

all athletes to make money from their name, image, and likeness. Now, one of the great fears about this was that only the quarterback would get a big endorsement deal, and that the rest of the you know, the linemen, would get nothing, and that it would be dominated by football and basketball.

That is not what has happened. It's amazing that so many of these deals have revolved around women athletes in sports that are not Olympic sports or across or just it's really been Even Mark Emmert, the president of the n c a A, said watching this evolve has been quote unquote really neat. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm not supposed to have an opinion. I'm interviewing you, but that seems nefarious to me because, uh, I mean, I don't understand how he suddenly got woke. Well, they're not that woke.

But I do think that acts really paying the players is not far behind shifting gears for just a second. Another thing that the n c A has said in one of its by laws is that student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an advocation, meaning a hobby, and student athletes should be protected from exploitation by commercial enterprises. How's

that going? That has been the rationale, And it's so ludicrous when they say it out loud in court that even that even the judge has a hard time stifling a laugh when they say that. It's has become so ridiculous. A collegiate model basically says that it's perfectly appropriate to maximize revenue for the schools and the athletic departments, but that the athletes remain students rather than employees. And they

always make this absurd distinction between students and employees. You know, when I was in college, I worked in the photo lab, so I was employee of the journalism school, but I was still a student. But the n c A basically says, you've got to either be a student or an employee. You can't have both, can't be both. So the collegiate model is the athletes are students, so they can't be paid, but every other aspect college sports is a revenue maximizing enterprise.

So far, the whiff of n c double A bullshit is pretty strong. It's clear that a lot of student athletes have been financially exploited, but what about their education? The n c double A mission states that education is paramount. Since the students aren't getting any of that money, are they at least getting a good education. So one example of the n c A wanting to put education first is their rules about how many hours per week the

athletes can practice. So let's say it's twenty hours a week. Well, that sounds pretty reasonable, but then it turns out that let's say they have a game on Friday night in Texas and they're in West Virginia, but the only hours that count towards the twenty hours are the two hours that they're on the field, and the rest of the thirty six hours or forty hours don't count. So there's

all kinds of loopholes like that. But more importantly, when an athlete is recruited, it is made abundantly clear that their sport comes first, so that means they can't take any classes that conflict with practice or games, which means that even those who are really quite studious have a very hard time finding a major that's legitimate. And a lot of the players, you know, they're major is communications or physic but really they're what I like to say

is they're majoring in eligibility. What's happening is that their academic advisors are directing them to classes that they know they'll be able to pass or they you know, have a good likelihood of passing that will allow them to remain eligible. Right and how many actually graduate? Do you know? There is some controversy over that. The n c A would say it's over. I would say for football and basketball.

A guy named Richard Southall at the University of South Carolina has done a lot of work dissecting that and using the federal government's graduation numbers and has concluded that it's much much lower than that, and for black players especially, it can be in the range depending on the school. It's crazy that these kids come into the school, they work on average fifty hours a week on their sport and then have school work on top of it, and

many of them don't graduate. It's a terrible grind. You know, you get up at six o'clock in the morning, you go to the weight room. Uh, then you know, you've got classes from maybe nine to three. Then you have practice, then you have mandatory study hall, and you know, go

to bed till eleven or midnight. It's really hard. And then you know, a lot of the players are not ready for college work because they've been pampered in high school and a lot of them think they're gonna be pros, so they don't spend enough time thinking about scholastics, right, and how many of them actually go on to professional sports career something like between one and two m Joe, just another question for you about this, essentially the injustice

of this system. Why don't some of the sponsors use their cloud to force the n c A or the college is directly to solve this problem. Um, because they make too much money. There's too much money at stake. So, Joe, is the n c a A a bullshitter? Well, of course it is. I don't even. I don't even. There's nothing else to say. Of course it is seems like

that is the only thing to say. So on a scale of zero to a hundred being the worst, what would you rate the level of bullshit at the c A. The real bullshit factor to me about the n c A is how orwellian the language is. Say more about that that they screw player in a dozen different ways, and yet they always characterize what they're doing as being the force for good, as being the people who are

trying to to save the college athlete. Last question, what is the one thing you would do to change this problem? Pay the players? Okay, folks, it's time to make the call. Is the n c double A really governing competition in a fair, safe, equitable, and sportsmanlike manner and integrating intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student athlete is paramount Based on what I've heard

so far, I gotta call bullshit. But remember, bullshit is a treatable disease, So after the diagnosis, we always prescribe a cure. After the break, we'll hear solutions from some great minds and activism on behalf of athletes everywhere. Stick with us before you head to the break. We'd love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to take action, maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it.

Leave us a message at two one two five oh five five, or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co collective dot com. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode Welcome back. All right, So, there's a pretty big gap between what the n C double A says it stands for and the actions that it takes. So the next question is what could the n C

double A do to actually solve this. We've assembled a small, yet mighty panel of experts and asked them to propose some concrete things the n C A A could do differently. So our first expert is Dr Ellen Starowski. Ellen, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Sure.

I am a proud member of the faculty and the Roy H part School of Communications at Ataca College, and in a previous lifetime, I started out my career as a college coach, moved on to become a director of athletics, and I've researched, written, and taught courses about a college sport now for we're now moving into four decades, so I'm very excited to be talking about this particular topic today. Thank you so much for joining us. And our second expert is Dallas Hobbes. Dallas, can you tell us a

little bit about yourself? Yeah, so I'm Washington State University defensive linemen on the football team here, originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and found my way over to Pullman, Washington because of sports, because of football, and really got heavily involved in some athletes activism. It's about a year now. It was one of the main leaders of the Reunited Movement group that was really pushing a lot of athlete activism and stuff on the table. So really happy to be here. Fantastic,

So let's get right into this. The way this works is I want all three of us to take no more than two minutes to present one idea, the single most important action that you think the n c A could take to better live their purpose. Alright, Ellen, am I going to ask you to kick us off. You're on the clock. I think that what's ailing the college

sports system in Dallas. You're on the ground work with the movement last summer is exhibit A. In terms of what needs to happen, there needs to be the creation of an independent players association that represents the interests of the players, because from the early nine hundreds to the present, we've had college sport leaders who have been putting forth an agenda that has benefited the business of college sport, but it has not represented the interests of the athletes,

and so to the reform is not going to happen without that step. That's a fantastic point. There is no one really truly representing the interests of the players right now, Dallas, over to you in two minutes. The single idea that you would want to get Mark Emmert to agree to, to get the n c A to actually walk their talk minds with the athletes in mind as well, mainly the the younger generation of athletes that are coming along.

I would like the n c A to create some sort of program with the revenue that they are generating, because there is a lot of it, to set up programs for lower income communities athletes that are lacking the right resources to get into sports. You know, I was lucky to have parents and grandparents um that were able to pay for these things, but there's a lot of people that aren't even able to get into the sports they enjoy and can't even make it to the collegiate level.

So that's something I really want to see happen, to really create some better areas for athletes to get into the n c A. Yeah, another fantastic idea, right access, which is absolutely not equitable right now, Thank you, Dallas. So my turn. I noticed that a lot of the talk is about the money, and I think that conversation is a super important conversation. But the n c a's mission doesn't say anything about money. It does say that the n c A exists to ensure that the academic

experience of the student athlete is paramount. And when you look at the academic outcomes, particularly in Division one and particularly in the money sports football and basketball, graduation rates are horrible. In some cases, twenty per cent of a team graduates, and many of the people who do graduate are kind of sham graduations because the player got allousy or non existent education. The story of dexter manly comes

to mind. Less than four percent of athletes ever get to the pros, which means that a huge number of D one athletes leave college and are sort of tossed away like refuse, with no ucation, no real prospects, and I think that's a crime. I propose that the n c A immediately begin forcing colleges to ensure that incoming athletes get a real education. Give them all a scholarship, but not for a year, not for four years, but

a scholarship for life. A student athlete should be able to play for four years so long as they're a student in good standing, and when that time is done, they should have a lifetime ticket to return to that school to finish their degree, and that scholarship should cover living expenses as well. If the n c A wants to claim that they're about the primacy of education, they need to back those words up with some immediate action. They have a great story, they just need to do

that story. So I'll stop there. I think all three ideas are provocative, ellen starting with yours. This idea of representation, that's another thing that struck me as just completely unfair. That until very recently, although it seems like some of these rules are changing, college athletes weren't allowed to have a lawyer or an agent, and there wasn't anybody looking out for them. Meanwhile, coaches have agents and the schools

themselves have the n c A to enforce rules. What's it going to take for that to really be put in place? Do you think it may end up being an Act of Congress? Quite literally? Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut has a bill before Congress right now which is arguing for athletes to have the opportunity to collectively bargain and to have an association that would allow for the kind of advocacy that a group like that would provide.

I want to cycle back to two things that you talked about in your proposal for reform with an emphasis on education, and the first one is that even though in the n c AS Mission statement it doesn't say anything about money, within that four and fifty page manual that they've got for Asian one, and who doesn't want to read that on any given night? I mean I

read it daily, of course, as we all do. But buried within there is a philosophy statement, and in the philosophy statement, it expressly talks about money, and it does so in a variety of ways. Um. You know, there's an ongoing narrative around college sport has been connected to education. But at the same time, this is a multi billion dollar global industry and it really needs to be understood

as such. And I think part of our conversations around reform really need to acknowledge the fact that athletes have their interests have been sacrificed. I think that this is one of the things that athletes would benefit from in terms of having a players association, because this is certainly this conversation and Dallas, I think, given the activism that the Pack twelve players had last summer, this is about compensation,

but this is about basic humanity and treatment. This is about education, This is about safe workplaces, this is about healthcare. And I'd really be curious to know, Dallas, what you think about that and frankly, what you think the critical issues are. Yeah, and that's something we were definitely trying to attack last summer. Our main focus was COVID at the time, you know, that was what was at the spotlight. But you know, there's a lot more things we can

put on the table. Health and safety, protections, protect all sports, in racial injustice in the college sports and society, and then economic freedoms and equity. Economic freedoms are starting to happen within I L coming out, which is a big win for US education is still in major one protecting all sports. We see all these sports keep getting like

Stanford had what twelve sports discontinued last year. When we keep seeing it at other schools, you know, there's a lot of main, big concerns that are still happening that need focus. Everyone thought once we got in l A and all these things, you know, we hit them along. It's all it now, you know. So I want to return to sort of our main theme here, which is what are the actions that the n c A should take, and maybe I want to look at it through a

slightly different lens. One of the things that just I found stunning was the degree to which the n c A has resisted any of these reforms over the years. There have been people trying to change these rules for years, and the n c A has used every means at their disposal to avoid sharing the money, instituting safety reforms, making sure that college students get an education, all of the ideas that we've been talking about today, Ellen, maybe

I should go to you. Why do you think that they are even today seemingly continuing to drag their feet and what's it going to take to get them to actually want to do it. We're in such a different environment than what we were in the or what we were in the nineteen hundreds, but the system itself has remained status quo. And I think that's part of the reason why there needs to be a players Association, because

there's no incentive for the leaders to change. In a classic labor construction, owners don't change until they have to, until there is an imperative for them to change. You can bring moral arguments to the table, you can bring economic arguments to the table, but the plain fact of the matter is until the power dynamic changes, nothing really

changes at all. And I think that's what is exciting about the n I L era and about what's happening with athlete activism in general, and frankly, I think it's part of why THEN is failing so badly in its leadership right now. It is completely misread the landscape. For instance, they've got a convention coming up in November to talk about reform, but they did not go to the different

organizations that are representing athlete interests right now. They didn't ask them for feedback, and they stayed internally with the people they generally do, and to me, that's the tell that they have no intention of really changing unless they absolutely have to. Athletes from the ground are making a change.

I think legislators are calling for a change, and frankly, I think the American public is beginning more and more to see the inequities and to get with why this is so dramatic And Alice, you talked so eloquently about the racial injustice in all of this, and this is the moment for the n c a A. Not to be responding to that in a substantive way is really deeply problematic. And Dallas, I see you nodding along as as Ellen spoke. And you've led some of these activists actions.

Why are these not more widespread? What is preventing the players from really getting together, because at the end of the day, you have a monopoly on the sports right without players, no sports. I'd love to hear you just talk about your experience as an organizer, what the conversations were like with the other players, what you guys felt like you had on the line, and what it would take to really make more of that kind of thing happen. The biggest thing we call it now is this conveyor bell.

You're moving along. You're told to focus on your sport in your school, and you just keep on going by. You know, everyone is grateful for you know, their scholarship or the equipment they have, the support they have from fans. You know, they're on this conveyor belt and they keep going. And then some people, you know, finally get to look to the right or to the left and they can see outside the conveyor belt. You know, the windows open up.

I'm grateful. I still I'm grateful, but I have finally noticed all the wrongdoings that are happening, all the programs that could be put in place to see the success of the athlete and not just the n c A as a whole. I think I talked to probably two thousand Pact twelve athletes you know at the time, mainly

football players, and they, you know, all had concerns. On average, maybe like five people from each school that came out and wanted to be a part of the United and really saw what was going on, and they came into our conversation, I came into our zoom calls. They saw everything that was happening, and they listened but we also had another two thousand people we were talking to, and those people, a lot of them didn't repost it. They didn't share the graphic that said they were with us

because they were scared. They sat in all those calls and they said, you know, this is what's going wrong here. You know, I have these concerns. I'm scared of this. I've had all these issues at my school. We heard all their stories. Whatever it was, they were scared. Can you talk a little bit more about that fear? Like, what are they afraid of? It comes down to the main thing. You want to play your sport and you get scared. You want to stay in your lane. You know,

I respect their decisions. You know, some people can't risk their scholarships. It's interesting in terms of the framing of labor issues in general and athlete activism that whenever you've got a group that has the kind of power inequities that we've got within college sport, whenever we've got that kind of dynamic when players step up and challenge the status quo, there's this question about, well, why weren't there

more of you? Rather than really putting into perspective just how profound that action was We've got the Northwestern players organizing and actually gaining the right to collectively bargain until they got derailed with the National Labor Relations Board. That was an action where people kept saying that will never ever happen. It will never happen. And there we saw football players who were signing union cards. And then we have Missouri where the entire football team boycott's on racial

injustices at Missouri. So rather than thinking about this in terms of who and sign on, officially, we should be looking at this as a movement where it's gaining ground and it's going to continue to gain ground. Coaches salaries are tied to in some cases winning and in some cases their ability to recruit top players, but they are not tied to educational outcome. Mark Emmert's salary at the n c a A isn't tied to educational outcome at all.

It seems to me that one of the levers might be tying people's salaries to better outcomes for athletes, whether they be educational or remunerative. Depending on whose contract it is, you will see coaches that will have bonuses in terms of their team APR scores and their graduation success rates. But think about that for a minute. Of that for a minute now. Actually, I don't think that is good.

I think that that is hypocrisy at the fight, because anybody who's working in higher education should be invested and athletes graduating. And the idea is that somehow we had to create a financial incentive for coaches to direct their attentions to graduating athletes. That just tells you how sick this system is and how corrupt it is. Well, I agree with that, Alan, but the sad reality of most

of the world is that effort follows money. And maybe that's cynical, but I just think if Mark Emmert, like he makes north of a million, if fifty percent of that even was tied to academic outcome, in other words, graduation rates across the universities, he would pay attention to that, and n t A would start to enforce rules that made sure that those rates got better. Now, you know, the n c A created the graduation success rate, but

it's interesting that graduation success rate compares to nothing. There is no metric for graduation success rate for undergraduate students. That's where we have the federal graduation rates, and that comes into play that's a different metric. So the n c A has created this pr campaign around graduation success rates. Yeah, they get gamed, right, Yeah, So creating that financial incentive, you're just going down another rabbit hole and effect. Well

that's grim. Thanks Alan, thanks for bumming us all out. No, that was great, And so I want to probe in the same area with Dallas because Dallas you put the student in student athlete. You're carrying a three point eight five g p A, is that right? And you've gotten awards for your academic achievement at Washington. How hard is that to do because that's I would say, pretty unusual. How well you're doing in school and in your chosen sport. How big a commitment of time and energy is that?

And is everybody on the team doing that? Are there people who are struggling? Yeah? I would say the biggest benefit to my success is my ability to learn and seek out as much resources that I can and completely suck those dry. And it also helps the fact the major I'm in is something I want to do the

rest of my life. I love art, you know, I love digital technology, so it's a passion of mine, but it is definitely a commitment once I get out of practice and get done, you know, studying playbook, you know, watching film, I dive right into school. That's all I do. The rest of the day are I dive into work that's just super inspiring. Right, and you've found two things that you love and that you're really good at, And to me, like, I look at you and I go,

that's the key to life. Right. You find things that you're passionate about and you pursue them with like ferocity. And the reason I'm probing so much on this is I want to figure out how to provide more of that for people, because no matter how good you are at your sport, the number of people who are going

to go on to play professionally is vanishingly smaller. And so helping people find that next passion, the thing that's going to carry them beyond their sport and into success in life, feels like a vital thing that college is supposed to do. That's what college is supposed to be for, and it doesn't seem to be working in the case of many, not all, but many college athletes. You know, I see a lot of other athletes that aren't in majors that are their passion, but they're in them because

they fit the schedule of what we're doing. That's where instead of you were talking about adding bonuses to coaches, No, we take that money and we add into academic resources, into academic advisors, into tutors, into the resources we can have. That's where the money go. And we need to see policies put in place that allow for more academic success, that allow for schedule adaptations for student athletes that have

crazy schedules. You know, we need to figure out a way where say this person's you know, wants to be an engineering or kinesiology one, to be an athletic trainer, wants to be, you know, a doctor, but that schedule does not fit a student athlete or an athletic schedule whatsoever. So we need to figure out how we can push resources, like you said, an extended scholarship that pushes onto six eight years where they can take a longer time to take a short amount of classes. There needs to be

put that policy put in place. But instead, you know, we see things that are forced where it's you have to have of your major complete by this time. So it's forcing these college athletes into majors that they're not passionate about, and then you see a success rate drop. They're forced to do do this, but then still hold a high grade payerent average to be successful, but it's not something they're passionate about. So it's in the end they're

just gonna drop it when they're done. So why not add in resources where they get this extended stay in college because only two percent make it to the next level. We're lacking in support for our advisors, were lacking in a lot of things that you would really see increase in real sustainable futures for college athletes because it's us, the student athletes that are doing the work. It's our education, it's our future. So we need the money to help

us succeed and to do something we're passionate about. That's very well said, So let me try another area. There's an economist who was quoted in Joe No Sarah's book, and in it he advocates for just an open marketplace right now. He argues that the n c A is essentially a cartel that artificially holds down wages in quotes

for college athletes in a collusional and coercive manner. The economist advocates that it should just be an open marketplace, that players should get paid whatever the market demands, and that colleges should be forced to compete with each other for players and for coaches on the open market, and that the market would eventually sort itself out, in other words, having essentially no rules about who makes how much money in what college. Ever, what do you both think about

that idea? Yeah, I see it. You know, it has as positives, but it has its negatives. Both sides have super extremes to them. If we're talking about an open market, we're seeing a lot of toxic environments. You would really see a major decrease in academic success in the education side of things, because it be like a professional league where say I could get X amount of dollars. Here people would be just hopping from one school to another.

But there are the benefits where players do see an increase of financial success, you know, generational wealth, and there's a lot of good things that could come from that. So before I let you go, I want you to think for a second and give the n c A a what we call a BS score, a bullshit score, So on a scale of zero to one hundred, one being the worst total bs and zero being the best zero bs. What would you give the n c A A on their level of achievement of their mission right now?

I'd definitely say it's in that six seventy range just because they're not they're not seeking change at all, so that just jumps up to score a lot, you know, perfect, Thank you so much, Ellen, Oh goodness, hold onto your hats and the gloves. Come on. Now, I'm going to get in trouble. But you know, if you parse out the language in that mission statement, you know, fair, equitable, ethical, it's no, no, no. So then student athletes in that term.

And we know that student athletes was an invention by the n ci A to a order compensation. Keeping in mind that this is an association that's representing higher education, is where we're supposed to put a free mean on truthful and ethical condom. And so when I put all of those pieces together, I come at zero one is what you mean? Right? Total bs? Oh? Sorry, but yeah, a hundred good. I was never good mat me either.

But I think it's deeply problematic because even this n I L situation, people are referring to this as reform, and this is not reform this is restoring a right that athletes had in the early nineteen hundreds. I would hardly say that this is progress. You know, it took over a hundred years to reverse that wheel. And I don't mean to be flipping here, but I think that the system really has failed and athletes deserve so much more, and frankly, I think that they have been the ones

that have demonstrated the leadership here. Thank you both so much for being on the show today. It has been an honor to meet both of you, truly, so keep up the good work both of you and fight on. Thank you very much. Time and Dallas has been a pleasure. It has absolutely been a pleasure to listen to you as well. I'd like to end the show today by giving the n C double A an official bullshit score.

You've heard our guests give their scores, so based on what I've heard today, because they stubbornly refused to change and have been dragged in front of the Supreme Court three times and lost, I give the n C double a n To weigh in with your own score, visit our website Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com. We'll track their behavior over time to see if they can bring that score down. You'll also be able to see where the n C Double A ranks on bullshit compared to the

other companies and organizations we feature on this show. So if you're running a purpose led business or you're thinking of beginning the journey of transformation to become one, here are the three things that you should take away from this episode. One. Truly purpose led organizations align their interests with as many stakeholders as possible. In the case of the n C Double A, they haven't considered the needs

of a major stakeholder, student athletes. Only by seeing to the needs of student athletes can the n C Double A hope to truly live their purpose. So the question for you is what stakeholders do you need to see to. Two. Once you've aligned on your purpose and your stakeholders, it's

all about action. We've talked today about a number of actions the n C double A could take to achieve that alignment, offering student athletes scholarships for life, or using some of the billions they rake in not only to pay athletes directly, but also to fund a set of programs to make access to sport more equitable. In the first place, your actions will undoubtedly be different. The point is actions are a vital part of being purpose led

and three. Change in any organization is led from the top. This is not something that can be done from the middle of the organization. In the n C double as case, Mark Emmert needs to model the n C double as purpose and use his bully pulpit to advocate for all of the n C double as stakeholders. In your organization. It's your founder or CEO who has to believe in

your purpose and actively push it throughout the organization. Speaking of which, Mark Emmert, if you ever want to come on our show to discuss any aspect of today's episode, you have an open invitation our thanks to our guests today, Joe no, Sarah, dr Ellen Starowski, and Dallas Hobbes go to our site Calling Bullshit podcast dot com for their social media handles. You can also find a link to Joe's book Indentured, The Battle to End the Exploitation of

College Athletes, which he co authored with Ben Strauss. While you're there, check out Allen's white paper This six billion dollar Heist and a link to some design work by Dallas Hobbes. Have any ideas for companies or organizations we should consider for future episodes. Submit them there on the site to Calling Bullshit podcast dot com and if we scored points with you today, subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcast us. Thanks to our production team Susie Armitage, Amanda Ginsburg, d S. Moss, Andy Kim, Hannah Beale, MICHAELA. Reid, Lena Beck, Silison, Jess Benton, and Basil Soaper. Calling Bullshit was created by co Collective and is hosted by me Tai Montague. Thanks for listening, hath It and I supply before you go. We'd love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to take action, maybe you disagree of today's bullshit rating.

Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us a message at two one two five oh five three zero five, or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co Collective dot com. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode