Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20151213

Pharmaceuticals, how the world did you get into College Sports . Guest i have had an eclectic career havent i . So i got into College Sports in a few ways. Like you, although not nearly at your level, i played sports in high school and college. I actually had a d1 athletic scholarship that mysteriously became an academic scholarship after i injured my back. I was so i always had an interest in sports. About 15 years ago i did a project with the inquire where i get to look at the business of College Sports. I guess that planted a seed in the back of my brain that at some point i like to come back and just look at the influence of College Football. Even then it would already have an extra ordinary impact on the university. Then what happened was it continue to grow in the money continue to grow dramatically. The scale of the sport continue to grow. So long story short, i propose doing a project at the washington post. They did not want to do it. I proposed it as a book seven years ago. My agent was not that interested back then but then he called me after the sandusky scandal about a year later and suggested it was time for a book of College Football. So i kind of lap because im not sure if he remembered that i propose that seven years earlier. Anyway he convinced me to do a proposal. Eventually we sold it and i was off and running. Host having written a book on sports in america in the nineties, a lot of it about College Sports, is surprised how much has changed. As a former student athlete there is always issues that you can raise, negative issues, but theyre also positive issues. Expensive be in a expensive being a student athlete was a great one for me. I wondered if that perspective was something that you thought about . Guest well, yes. I. I certainly have thought about it. Theres no question it is a positive experience. What what i was interested in however, i was interested in looking at this from the standpoint of the business aspects in the scaling up of the money from football and how the Financial Model had changed over the decades. So you can only do so much with any book and i decided i was going to write a book about the economics of it as opposed to a book about the experience of the student athletes themselves. So, i would say the experience can be very different particularly for football and mens basketball players, possible for the Womens Basketball player as well just due to the shorter amount of money and pressure involved in the sports today. I think its a lot harder to be a truly serious student athlete when you are playing those sports and at that level, in the elite programs that would be at a lot of other schools, and in particularly as you go down the ranks with the d2 and d3, certainly d3 schools. Host i would agree, as a chemistry major major was very hard to do that play basketball. I look out over College Sports and watching the president ial debates you hear all of this about income inequality. Therefore hundred 50000 kids going through College Sports right now getting degrees who may not have had that opportunity social economically otherwise. It is interesting. Its always the pluses and negatives in any of these things. I know know your book really focused on the business side of it. You talk about your Business Model, would you elaborate on that a little bit. Guest if you look at the history of the model, what has changed is that decades ago president s were embarrassed by what they were seeing. It was a combination of scandals, the academic academic scandals, cheating scandals that would routinely pop up. I think they were embarrassed by the commercialization of College Football because we are really here talking about a book about College Football so i will limit it to that. What happened was the idea that using university dollars somehow for athletics, it somehow tainted the university. Now i happen to disagree with that idea, in fact i think they made a terrible mistake by coming to that line of thinking. What they did was they went Athletic Directors and said, okay, you want to do this thats great. But we do not want to give you university dollars, we want you to come up with the money on your own. So the model evolved over the decades that were College Football, because it is the most visible, the richest sport, i will not say it is the easiest, but the Athletic Directors were incredibly successful at monetizing it because the demand was so great. Television contracts increased dramatically. These things known as the seat donations and i think will talk about this at some point, these increased or medically. Revenue and face value of the tickets increase. The other corporate money, the advertising, the digital scoreboard advertising, that nike, under armour, Adidas Company money increase. This model around football evolved to the point where today where the schools that play at the most elite level, the five socalled super conferences or power conferences, it is not unusual for football to account anywhere between 50 and as much as 70 of all of the revenue flowing into the athletic department. So think about how that influences the universities. How it influences the athletic department. About the pressures it brings to bear on the athletic departments, on the Athletic Directors and on the coaches themselves. Thats what i was trying to explore in my book. Host how they have funded a lot of the growth and College Sports. Those those fees are more important smaller schools and big schools. Thats an area where students are saved look, how my going to continue to pay this cost of education going up. Any thoughts on that . Guest well, yes. I have been asked that a lot. Its interesting because i ran out of space in my book to have a separate chapter on the issue of pain players. But i have thoughts. What we see now, again at these elite schools theres roughly 60 or 65 in the five conferences is the move towards pain what theyre calling the full cost of attendance. That is basically involves giving the player an additional couple thousands of dollars, may be up to 5000 dollars. In the ncaa they basically signed off on this for these conferences. I have no issue with that. I think clearly the players are the ones who are responsible for all of the money, so so why not give them that money. When i think about though, is down the line. I dont think were quite at the Tipping Point but i think where getting toward a Tipping Point where the pressure to pay the players even more, to move the model even a little further off the edges of the campus or to the edges of the campus where it becomes even more of a semi pro model. Again, were talking about football, although football, although we could look at basketball as well. What happens is, i dont think the players and in a few years are going to be satisfied with just a few thousand dollars. I i think they will look around, some are quite smart and at least smart enough to see where the money is and how much is they are, what the coaches are being paid and ask why they shouldnt be getting more. What i worry about a little bit is that the pressure to pay the players, even more significant sums of money, or or possibly going to a competitive marketplace where you are bidding for a Great Quarterback in california, oregon linebacker in western pennsylvania and you are bidding up the price they are going to pay for that player. It is not impossible that well get to that model. As he moved to that model there all kinds of consequences. The current model begins to unravel, you have, you have lots of tax issues, is that player then centered an employee . If he is an employee does he need to pay taxes on mac . Are you going tothe money in a siphon where stipend where you get it at the ends. Are you finally admitting that College Football as its practice at these elite schools truly is a large for prophet or commercial. If you admit that, to then say okay, were going to pay taxes. Then you lose the umbrella of tax protection that you have in the current model will we still pretend the sports are more educational experiences than they are commercial experiences. Those those are fear mice thoughts. Host one of the consequences you talk about is title ix. Obviously that kicks in very strongly. Talk about that. Guest it could be a real problem for title ix. Some folks are talking about a situation where basically football and mens basketball, possibly Womens Basketball will the over here almost in a box if you will. This far corner of the campus and then you would take all of the other sports, the socalled olympic sports are the nonmoney sports, the nonrevenue sports, i call them the poor sports because they do not generate much money. They would in effect be pulled back inside the university, more toward a model that used to exist. It would be funded i assume out of university dollars at that point in time. In terms of title ix, if youre going to pay these other players a lot of money, i, i would think that at some point someone will file a lawsuit say if youre going to pay those players ten or 20000 why shouldnt the volleyball player get 20000 or the baseball player . Assuming there still a Baseball Team at your college. The Soccer Player or field hockey. So we are entering in on searching era as we go along. There are a lot of complicated questions that people a lot smarter the meat will have to figure out as it evolves. Host your observations are very keen. One of the things you focus on a great deal is president ial control and in your view president ial control has been a failure. In my own experience ive had a lot of president s say look, they throw their hands up because of the difficult situation. For them to manage, but why do you think president ial control guest the blunt is the answer is, and were talking about football is you suggested that you are going to scale back at a place like ohio state, remember what happened to gordon, or usc, or alabama, our georgia or florida, what would happen. I interviewed a number of people in this ten to go out of town when i come inches but i interviewed a few people and they basically said the same thing. They would lose their jobs tomorrow if they became aggressive about cracking down on the various abuses, questioning about whether it really makes sense to pay up football coach 5 million per year when the president himself or herself as being paid 500,000. And a full process professor is making 110,000. They would probably lose their job. We saw at university of alabama birmingham that the president tried to eliminate football which is a much smaller program and not especially good work, we we can argue that whether it makes money or loses money, but he almost lost his head and is now entrenched and is bringing it back. So next year they are going to be back at College Football at the d1 level. Its incredibly, i recognize its incredibly complicated for the president. I absolutely do recognize that. On the other hand, there are ones who are charged with leading the university and with leading the university mission. Who else is going to lead this . Who else is is going to say enough is enough. As certain point may be we need to look at this a little more closely than what we do. Host i think youre right on the presence of the book but i think its absolutely fair, i went back and read 40 years worth of congressional testimony, hearings, i hearings, i read all of the reports that the nca president ial task force put out that the Night Mission put out, all of the stuff that the presence were associated with, when you read that history, two things are really clear to me. Once the president s clearly understand the problem. They talk relentlessly about the escalation of cost and the impact other schools and how they would take to change it in the second point is, then they threw throw up their hands and say, but we are powerless to do anything about it. We need someone outside the university to tell us what to do. The question then is who is that going to be . The going to be the ncaa question that i dont thank so. As a going to be congress . Again, i dont think so if you look at the history of congress in this, forgive me former congressman but it is not great. They have written into laws, tax breaks for some of this. They have backed from some of the reforms. I dont know. Maybe maybe im being a little harsh, you tell me. Host when i was in congress, senator bill bradley, myself, we put together the student rights bill which requires schools to disclose the Graduation Rates of their students and their studentathletes. That has led to a lot of Reform Efforts including the apr and schools disclosing, so i also believe that having been a trustee in that region for the last eight years, i believe that trustees and regents need to be more involved. Oftentimes whenever scott involved they were not. I do think president s need some of that support. To make sure the program is running with the sound principles and so forth. So, i throw that out as a point but the thing that caught me in your book was that you talk about the biggest threat to this model. Not necessarily being players being paid or concussions, or any of those things, the biggest threat are that a lot of that millennials are losing, their Attention Span is not longterm focused on these games. Talk about that. Its interesting. Guest i will. Let me just throw back one thing in response to what you just said. First of all, i agree with you 100 on including the regents of the trustees. They absolutely need. They absolutely need to be involved in that. Maybe that is enough. One other thing i would say is on the academic metrics of graduation, the apr, that sort of thing, those are good for sure. I would like to see one other metric, i had a conversation with the former president of Princeton University who has written books about academics and athletics, they are good books. He made the point that what is really needed is a longitudinal study where you look at and pick maybe one year and pick all of the Football Players who are on the team that year and then track them over a period of time. Say five or or ten years, and look at what happens to the five years out, ten years out, lets go back and measure them. How many graduated, how many had jobs that is somehow tied to their degree, was their degree useful or were they clustered into majors that basically are not going to help them once they graduate, are they even working . That sort of a study. I. I think the ncaa could start doing that tomorrow if theyre pressured by the president s to do that or by congress, and i think the only reason they probably do not do it is because they are afraid of the results. Host back to that point for a second, i agree with you. Later life outcomes are very important. I talked to to the ncaa about this, this is an important issue because the proof is what happens to the kids when they leave school. In my own experience, which is somewhat dated, a lot of the kids did very well, some did not do so well, at the university of maryland, for the whole student body we do longitudinal studies. We want to longitudinal studies. We want to see how theyre faring in the marketplace. Thats where we come up with the statistic that if you get a degree that maryland probably means about 1,000,000 dollars more of income over your life. I think this is a very important point. I think ultimately it will show the truth here. Guest i do too. If if i could recommend one thing today that would be what i would recommend. So to go back to your other question, i was playing playing around with this idea of technology and the impact and the potential disruptive impact on College Football. I got interested in this after i heard that students were leaving university of alabama Football Games at halftime. I assumed this was during the blowouts that alabama play. It was significant enough that nick sabin was basically upright at the students the following week for leaving the game. But it got me thinking about why would they leave games. And what is this generation of students like . The answer is they are a lot more distracted and distractible then probably i was, you were, our parents and grandparents were. So i am wondering, the impact can come in two ways. One is is the access point. How you actually experience the game. Currently the basic tv model is throughout contents, they can charge large Advertising Fees and the Cable Companies and they can make a lot of money. What i wonder about is his downstream, basically were getting this feed from a lot of different devices from our phone, a pad, or Something Like that. Does that impact the economics and so forth. The other thing i wonder about is simply few have a phone in your hand or some other device in your hand 247 and youre constantly going like this and not paying much attention to the game, is that going to have an impact both in the stands outside of the stands. I think im talking with people it probably is going to have some impact. So far when i ask Athletic Directors about this they kinda laugh at me but they also told me how pretty much how they are investing large amounts of money in improving the wifi experience inside the stadium, which im not quite sure is a winning formula to protect yourself, but we will see. Host its a very interesting observation because it is happening at the university of maryland, kids are coming to the game less frequently, they want to use their phones and all of those things are distractions. Its an interesting thing because whats happening is television dollars continue to grow so obviously that will continue, for now but its interesting when you talked about the bubble and the fact that thats for the potential risk is. I actually think the real risk here is if one of these lawsuits prevails and players are out to can meet on tran compete in the marketplace that will open a pandoras box of issues. Guest i dont disagree with you, i dont want to overstate the technology i put it in there because i do think it is beginning to have an impact and it will have more impact as we go down the line. But i agree with you, if one of the antitrust lawsuits or another lawsuit place out or the players simply at a point in the future say look, if you want to continue to have football you will have to pay its real money. Will go to a competitive market model. I say all bets are off at that point. Im not even sure that, who once the team at that point, does the point, does the university continue to on the team . Or maybe you set it up as a limited Liability Corporation or forprofit company over here. Its a subsidiary of the university or maybe it becomes more standalone than it is today. I agree with you, i think there are a lot of really serious implications that i wish people writing this narrative today on the sports pages would get more engaged in those potential impacts than simply framing it as the players are victim and we need to pay the players. Its more complicated than that narrative. Host i think it focuses on the great athlete oftentimes have access to going to the process but most kids dont. So you look at a school like northwestern where tuition is very high, 70000 per year. The kids are getting scholarships and all of a sudden if you go to a competitive marketplace, 260 kids hundred 60 kids will not get 70000 scholarships per year. A lot of kids who are benefiting from the system right now will be left on the sidelines. As you point out is very complicated issue. Switching subjects into the coaches area, in Chapter Three talk about the art of paying a coach not to coach. I was speaking about my all my martyr recently, the university of maryland. What it has done recently. What are your comments on that . Guest its been an interesting week for coaches. You have one quitting at south carolina, he he said dont use the word retire i forget what word he said. Basically quitting. That was surprising and interesting. You had the usc coach getting fired with his problems of the question is going to become while, what what is going to happen at usc . Then he had north texas where the coach got fired after a block game in one of these geared to where his team was basically sacrificed to one of the elite programs and then he had maryland. That was interesting and i dont follow maryland football that closely so i was here for me at least it was a little surprising. Then i read the stories and i found the Athletic Directors comments really interesting. I wish they wouldve written more on them because unless im reading it we really need someone a lot more exciting than the coach we need to have a more open system where one of these offenses are scoring a gazillion points because i suppose that keeps the fans engaged. The other side of it was that four months ago, correct me if i have these dates wrong. Four months ago they extended edsalls contract by a couple of years. At that point theyre saying is so many words that he is the guy to take us to the next level, whatever that level is. Here we are, four months later firing him in the season and one of the consequences when he fire someone is that he still has any number of years left on his contract were think he could go somewhere between three and estimates as high as 4 million on his contract between the left over this year and figure two more then he had going out. So im interested in the whole issue of coaches and what theyre paid and what does it say about the university and the impacts. Who has the leverage in these negotiation i argue in my book is not a true marketplace, it is not transparent, the coaches and their agents have the leverage of the Athletic Director seemed to willing to open up the checkbook to keep the model running and keep the money coming in. It helps to subsidize the other sports and the other salaries. Its an absolute fascinating thing. Host its a tough decision for any, i know with marilyns attendance following an revenue declining, it becomes a difficult choice. Particularly when the coach has done well academically with his players. These are never easier. Its happening across the country, its not unique to maryland. I to maryland. I do agree with you that over the years the leverage has been more with the coach than with the a d. Let me give you an example playback when i was in congress in the early 90s i had a hearing on on one of the issues are coaches salary. I was talking about that there was not a milliondollar coaches salaries. It has gone out of the roof in the last three years. Host i wrote. Guest i wrote a story would next sabin left Michigan State after the 99 season. He was earning 697,000 at Michigan State at that time. Some of the assistant Athletic Director said he was unhappy and he felt unappreciated and wanted other opportunities outside of the school to make more money. Particularly in football and probably mens basketball. Host and staying on that point with my alma mater for a second, you write about marylands move to the big ten which i was the regent, the only regent to oppose it. It was a very abbreviated process, and i thought we needed more deliberation. Guest yeah. Host but elaborate on your comments on that subject. Guest yeah. Well, its, you know, its interesting from any number of perspectives. You know, maryland was interesting at that point in time because they were having or beginning to have at least Financial Issues in the athletic department. They were spending down the reserve fund that they had. They were eliminating i think they eliminated eight sports, correct me if im wrong on that, including the mens Cross Country indoor and outdoor track which broke my heart because when i was a High School Track athlete in the mid and late 60s, maryland was one of the goto programs in the country. Just terrific track program. So that hurt. [laughter] you know, i went out and interviewed jim delaney, and i asked him jim is the commissioner of the big ten, and i should disclose, went to the same catholic Boys Prep School in new jersey that i went to, st. Benedicts, but three years ahead of me. Great basketball player. I asked him about maryland and rutgers and why, and really, you know, again it comes back to money and economics. Yeah, the schools probably fit the profile of other big ten schools from a research standpoint in academics and size, but geographically its really valuable to the big ten because it allows them to lock up geography, it helps recruiting wise for the schools, but it also expands the market for their big ten cable network. Jim said that, look, theres and million eyeballs theres 13 million eyeballs between new york city down to d. C. , and if we get a million of those eyeballs then, wow, thats going to be really great; meaning the subscriptions for the Big Ten Network. So the economics are there. Now, for maryland i dont know enough about their declining attendance, but it wouldnt surprise me if football had a declining attendance there. But the amount of money that they can make when they become a fullfledged member of the big ten, and i forget off the to have of my head how many years that takes, but it takes a few, its going to be a fairly significant increase from what they were getting when they belonged to the acc. I mean, its probably a magnitude of 10 or 15 additional millions of dollars and, again, you probably know the figures better than i do. So, i mean, after a serb point if theyre certain point if theyre a full fledged member, i think theyll be making somewhere in the neighborhood of 32 million thatll get passed through from the conference. And conceivably, that could continue to grow if the Big Ten Network continues to thrive. So from that standpoint financially, it probably makes sense. Athletically, im not so sure. I dont know. You know, will they be able to compete at that level, compete successfully at that level . What about the travel costs . What other impacts will that have on the student athletes . Those are all questions that i think im waiting to see answers for. Host well, i think youre right on. Financially, it was a very strong move for maryland, and being part of that consortium of Research Institutions was another plus. As a regent, it came to us very quickly, we had very little time to deliberate on it. But, you know, a lot of these things are driven by just pure dollars and cents. The fact that maryland was the fourth Largest Television market. But this conference, this reshuffling the decks from time to time to build a bigger conference package, its an interesting phenomena. And i always go back to the Supreme Court decision 1984, the oklahoma case when the ncaa lost monopoly guest yep. Host sort of the beginning of all this fragmentation really where everybody eat chasing thal everybodys chasing the almighty dollar. And do you have any comments on that . Guest i think youre right. Host yeah. Guest no, i think youre absolutely right. I think it took a couple of years for that to play out. Initially, it was kind of interesting, initially, if i remember correctly, i think the Television Revenue actually fell a little bit for a year or two after that Supreme Court decision. But then by the late 80s they began to spike up, and you began to see the Cable Companies, you know, like espn becoming very aggressive, fox news evolves, you know, theyre suddenly there, and theyre bidding on contracts. Cbs has always been a bidder, nbc, of course, has the exclusive notre dame contract. So that money really gips to flow in the 90s begins to flow in the 90s and really explodes in the 2000s, particularly at the end of that decade with the pac12 contract t for 3 billion. And now the sec and espn with the sec network, the Big Ten Network with its money. And its not surprising from an economic standpoint or a marketplace standpoint that i think the Athletic Directors in the schools would say, huh, am i in the right conference. And, you know, maybe id be better off being in another conference. I could make more money. Or in the case of the Old Southwest conference, the big 12, you know, look at texas a m where, you know, they looked at texas getting an exclusive contract for the Longhorn Network with espn, and they saw that that was going to hurt them recruiting wise and also hurt them financially because i think the big 12 was the only one that didnt go ahead and form its own conferencewide networks. They didnt get that boost in Television Money coming in. And the Athletic Director down at a m basically saw all this happening and said, huh, you know, why do i want to belong to this conference anymore . And the sec not being stupid looked at a m and saw a way into the texas market which is huge, and, you know, invited texas a m to join the sec. Texas a m gets a whole lot more money, they now did a 450 or 60 Million Dollar renovation of their football stadium, added 20,000 seats. All this stuff plays off of one another and snowballs. So from that standpoint, or its not surprising at all. Theyre chasing dollars. From the standpoint of the impact on the schools, loyalties, things like that, i think its a whole other issue. I think merlin was in the acc maryland was in the acc for 60some years when it jump today the big ten. Host you talk about all this spending and the tremendous acceleration in the growth of revenues, but where if you had a crystal ball, how is this going to be limited, or how do you bring some sense to this whole model . Yeah. Well, i had an interesting conversation with a writer for vice sports which is actually quite a good web site in which he suggested that if it goes to a competitive model where youre bidding for players and bidding up, you know, the amount youre going to pay to players, that its possible that that somehow begins to help rationalize the marketplaces from the standpoint of, well, youre then maybe going to pay the coaches a little less money because you have less money available. Maybe it forces out some of the excess and some of the facility spending in the athletic departments, the back offices. You know, i dont know enough to know whether that would happen or not. You know, theres the possibility of this Younger Generation of students being less interested. Attendance, if i read correctly, i think attendance was actually down overall, and its on a trend thats slightly downward. I dont want to overstate that impact, but, you know, id be a little bit worried about that. Host slightly up this year. Guest the technological impact whats that . Host i think its slightly up this year. Guest okay. Host but i, but your point is over the trend line its been guest yeah. I mean, yeah. I think the trend line is that it begins to slow a little bit. I mean, it has to slow a little bit because i think the revenues from tv are going to slow. And i think you see that a little bit with espn which is beginning to make noise, you know, where its earnings arent quite where they were in the past, and part of the attribution for that is, well, they paid so much on the last round of the t contracts. I dont think the next round of television contracts will be for the Cable Networks at least and the regular networks will be quite as lucrative as the past round has been. But that said, you know, what i dont know is the sec network, the Big Ten Network, the pac12 network, these kind of separate Inhouse Networks all seem to be doing quite well. Maybe those Revenue Streams will help make some of it up. So long answer to your question is i think for the time being it stays basically where its at. I think if we had this conversation ten years from now, i think its going to look different than it looks today, and i do think it will be a little less regimented possibly today or at least will begin to slow down a little bit. Host well, you talk about the minor sports, but, you know, talking to the president of maryland, he said that was the toughest decision he ever had to make for those kids who were involve inside those involved in those sports, as you said. On a national level, these sports make up our olympic movement, our grassroots for our olympics. Have you thought about what that means . If you end up the Business Model is sports make money, maybe a third, and all these others have to be subsidized, but they are important for our olympic effort. Guest right. Yeah, i thought about it a lot. I havent thought about it thats a good point that youre making i havent thought about the potential impact down the line for things like the olympics or, you know, panamerican games or pick another, pick another major event worldwide. And youre right, that could have an impact as you eliminate some of those sports. I would worry about that. These sports are tremendously important at that level, and i would argue that having gone out to places like and kansas state and been there at like wisconsin and kansas state and been there at the crack of dawn with the womens rowers to watch them practice and how hard a sport it is and how hard they practice, and yet when you talk with the athletes and interview them, you find that they truly are the model of student athletes, the old greek ideal of sound mind, sound body. Theyre majoring in real sports, theyre balancing really difficult schedules, theyre getting up before dawn to go work out on the water and pull in the heat, you name it. So i would, i certainly wouldnt want to see those sports go away. I have, i dont know, this may be an incredibly naive thought, but ill kind of lay it out there anyway. [laughter] i mean, my thinking about all this is if you truly believe and i do that athletics are educational and important to your university, well, then why would you be embarrassed about using university dollars, general revenue funds to pay for them . And, you know, the answer i keep coming back to is, well, its all this excess that worries the president s and wants them, you know, to say, football, you need to pay for yourself and, by the way, well use you to crosssubsidize these other sports. Why cant you pull them back in house and fund them out of general revenues . And even with title ix i dont think its going to make it prohibitively expensive. I dont think that its going to create a situation where, you know, youre constantly massaging and playing around with numbers which is whats happening today with the model in order to achieve proportionality with title ix, you know, and equal opportunities. I think you could do that at least with the olympic sports and pull them back and have them inside the budget and fund them with university dollars, and it wouldnt be truly that big of a problem. I think if youre transparent about it and explain it to the other students who, in effect, are paying for it, i think they probably would go along with it. Host it truly, football and basketball are the cash cows that support a lot of these olympic sports in this country. So its, it is a challenge, and it, you know, doing well in the olympics is part of our national interest. So how this all sorts out will be very different. And to your point about all these kids who are going to school, i mean, we always focus on football and basketball where, obviously, the challenges are greater. But you look across the board at all the other sports, and those kids do well academically, and they truly are the greek beyond all doubt that you pointed greek ideal that you pointed out. Sometimes its overlooked when we talk about these issues, you know . Guest well, i agree with you. And the athletes that i spoke with, i mean, they truly do have real majors. I mean, theyre premed, theyre prelaw, or theyre studying nursing, theyre going to become teachers, economics, biology, math, you know, pick a real what you think of as a real major, and theyre majoring in it and balancing and doing this juggling act. Its really, its really quite impressive. And, you know, its something that needs to be supported. I think, though, i mean, what youve seen over the last two decades with the issues of the money sports, football and mens basketball in particular, and the Business Model i call it the football model because its really driving the revenue stream is it, however, creates this juggling act, and thats why youve seen so many sports eliminated in order to, you know, in order to keep football running along at the size or the scale that it keeps running along at as opposed to being a more modest operation than it is. And a fair number of athletes, probably thousands of athletes who, you know, have lost scholarships and have lost sports. Host yeah. What really interests me about your book is you talk about the growth of facilities, coach salaries and so forth but also the academic support which, i think, is one of the Fastest Growing areas in athletic departments. Guest it is. Host you kind of elaborate about that. But, you know, theres a good and bad. The good is, obviously, these kids are getting a lot of support, and thats very positive. And, obviously, the bad is where you see situations where certain universities are, you know, helping these kids literally get through school by doing their work. So talk about that. Guest yeah. Well, you know, yeah. I mean, whats interesting to me is, i mean, a couple things. One is that the rise of Academic Support Centers or programs, which is what theyre called, is something youve seen in the last two decades. And the schools now spend, the large elite schools are spending basically between 2, 3, 4 million a year covering everything from the employees, the tutors, reading and writing specialists, the learning specialists for athletes with disabilities, learning disabilities, life skills coaches, you name it. So the operating, operational costs annually are quite expensive. And then theres the added cost of building this center. I went out to the university of oregon where phil knight gave the school, basically built them a 42 million academic support center. Its extraordinarily lavish. Just unbelievable. Looks like a modern museum of art. You couldnt have a nicer facility. And, you know, i visited, spent time with the director. Great guy there. You know, i think youre right. You can look at it with two different ways. You can say to yourself, this is a great thing, you know . The school has a moral responsibility to these athletes. If youre going to recruit people in and if theyre not, you know, theyre a standard deviation or so behind the mean of the undergraduate population, you know, you have a responsibility to help them along. As i write in billion dollar ball though, theres another way of thinking about it, and that is, look, this is yet another example of the extraordinary length you have to go to to keep certain athletes eligible to play and, hopefully, at least on a track to get some kind of degree whether its a particularly useful degree or not, i dont know. But, yeah. Its a yin and yang. You have these two different ways of thinking about this issue, and, you know, i think about them in both ways, and i write about them in that way. I will say if you look at the scandals, and theres been quite a number of academic and cheating scandals over the last decade. They seem to pop up every month or so. The most recent and dramatic one which started a few years ago down at the university of is still ongoing. Where athletes were being funneled into what they called paper classes where all you had to do was turn in a tenpage paper at the end of the semester, and there were no classes. You didnt show up for any classes and, you know, you were basically guaranteed a b or an a. That kind of thing. When you look at those scandals, what you see is most of the time in one way or another they point back to the academic or they come back to the academic support center. And when i think about that, what that tells me is the Pressure Point on those centers, the pressure for them to keep players eligible in these troubled sports is just fundamentally dramatic. Its just ramped up so much as the pressure to keep the revenue going as ramped up, so too has the pressure to keep these athletes eligible ramped up dramatically over the last decade or so. So its not easy. Host its an interesting comment because, as you said, theres good [inaudible] ask the provo well give you an answer whether youve got some abuse and some issues to deal with. You know, and again, thats. Yeah, no, i agree with you, and thats a critically important point. I looked at the sec schools, i looked at took the football rosters, and i looked at the majors that they listed for the players, and clearly, clustering is occurring almost at every school in certain subjects. You know, you would see disproportionately large numbers of athletes in certain majors, and they werent the harder majors. They were majors with less lab work, less math requirements that left more Time Available to train. It was that simple. And i worry about those athletes and what happens to them. Assuming they get a degree, where they end up with that degree later on which is why i think its important to study that. The other thing is, you know, the ncaa began to collect data on majors about five years ago, and they said they were going to make it public, and it still isnt public. I mean, i think a real simple thing to do now, again, im probably being naive about the politics here is why not on their web site by school, by sport list the majors of the athletes . You dont have to put names down, just put numbers down. I think that would have a fairly interesting impact on schools, because its a truly important host well, you know, and disclosure is the great disinfectant, as former Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said. It is very important because i think the more disclosure, i think, the more transparency you have in the system. We only have a couple minutes left, but i did have to ask you about football envy. Talk about that. [laughter] when you guest yeah. Host when you say there are, theres football envy schools or programs out in america, what guest well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have this elite group of cluster of schools whether its 60 or 65 schools that are getting all this money and all this attention, and then you have these other 60 i think it is from a boise state which is quite good at playing division i football and, frankly, is desperate to get into the pac12 but it hasnt happened yet, down to the akrons, the eastern michigans, the new mexico states, the florida atlantics, the Florida International universities, you know, schools that are trying to compete at the highest, most expensive level as the other schools but dont have the model simply doesnt work for them. People dont go to their games, they end up having to buy their own tickets in order to meet the ncaa requirement that you average 15,000 ticket sales over three years. You know, theyre still paying their coaches a lot of money, theyre still investing huge amounts of money at places like akron and fau in stadiums, you know, 60, 70 million stadiums that nobody goes to the games. They dont have the Television Revenue because theyre not part of Major Conferences where they have Big Television contracts. They dont have their own networks. So the revenue stream just doesnt work. When i asked i interviewed probably ten College President s at these types of schools, and i always asked them the question, you know, why do you do this . Whats the opportunity costs of doing this . They would say, well, from a business standpoint, it probably doesnt make any sense. Its just not working. But we think that if we dont have a football program, that were going to be viewed as not a Real University. I actually had president s say that to me. They said, well, you know, we wont be a Real University if we dont have a large football stadium, if we dont have a large football team. And then they said, you know, its also the one thing that we can do to draw the largest amount of attention to our school. And i thought about that which is going through a serious retrenchment with lots of layoffs, 60 million hole in its longterm financial plan. And you see all the cutbacks, its everything except football. They still dont touch football because theres this magical thinking that if you just have football, that somehow in the long run, you know, its all going to pay off. Host its amazing, because universities get enormous donations to their athletic department. Georgetown just got 50 million. It is still the front porch, it attracts a lot of money, and i can see why schools take that risk, you know . Its an interesting, interesting to watch. Im sure youve been noting all the fantasy football stuff. We only have a few minutes heft. [laughter] what do you think all that means to football and to sports . Guest well, i dont know. You know, i watch the nfl, and i find the ads just incredibly annoying. [laughter] theyre relentless, arent they . Host they are. Guest yeah. And, you know, if you look at whats been written about it, i mean, clearly it doesnt, you know, the idea the lone better is going to make 5 million is just absurd. The really serious betters are the ones apparently making all the money. I mean, the question becomes does that then facilitier down to college filter down to College Football somehow . And do we have fantasy College Football leagues . Maybe we can end on that. My response would be i sure hope not. [laughter] host well, gil, thank you so much for coming on today. Billion dollar ball, as i said, i enjoyed reading it and look forward to meeting you in the future, so guest well, thank you. I really appreciate being on the show, and i appreciate your questions. Host thank you. That was after words, booktvs Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed. Watch past after words programs online at booktv. Org. Host university of wisconsin professor jennifer ratnerrosenhagen, who was Frederick Nietzsche . Guest he was a 19th century german philosopher who wrote many, many, many, many books on philosophy and all sorts of different forms. And all of them some after riskic, some essayistic, some longer formally teaks, and all of them critiques, and all of them had something to do with the challenge of universal truth. So he took as his enemy the notion of universal truth, and pretty much all of his work has something to do with his effort to tear it