Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20151206

Student athlete and someone who has worked on student athlete reforms issues for many years i have really enjoyed your books, i bought it as soon as it came out, it was great to be with you today. I guess the most obvious question after your career and covering so many areas like homeland security, pharmaceuticals, how how did you get into College Sports . Guest i have had an eclectic career have anti . 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. So i always had an interest in sports. Then about 15 years ago i did a project about the inquirer where i looked and began 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 would like to come back and just look at the influence of College Football because even then it was already had a strong impact on universities. Then what happened is it continue to grow, the money continue to grow dramatically. So long story short, i propose doing a project at the washington post. They did not want to do it. I proposed it is a book seven years ago. My agent wasnt very interested back then and he called me after the sandusky and suggested it was time for a book on College Football. I laugh because im not quite sure that he remembered i proposed it seven years ago. He commits me to do a proposal, eventually we sold it i was off and running spin. Host havent written a book in the 90s about College Sports, i was surprised at how much was change. A former student athlete theres always issues that you can raise, negative issues, but also positive issues. The experience of being a student athlete a student athlete was a great one for me. I wondered if that perspective was something you thought about . Guest well i certainly have thought about it. Theres no question it is a positive experience. What i was interested in however, i was interested in looking at this from the standpoint of the isthmus aspects. 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 that i was going to write a book about the economics of it as opposed to a book about the experience of the student athlete itself. So i would say the experience can be very different particularly for football and basketball players, possibly for the Womens Basketball players as well due to the extraordinary amount of money, and pressure involved. I think it is harder to be a truly serious student and athlete when you are playing though sports at that level in the elite programs than it would be at a lot of other schools. In particular as you go down the ranks with the d2 and then d3. Host i would agree. As a chemistry major is very hard to do that and play basketball. I look out over College Sports a watching the president ial debate you hear all of this about income inequality but theres 450,000 kids going through College Sports right now getting degrees who may not have had that opportunity socially economically otherwise. Its always the plus and negatives in any of these things. I know your book really focused on business side of it. You talk about your Business Model, how the Business Model change. Would you elaborate on that . 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 seen, it was a combination of scandals, the economic scandals, cheating scandals that would routinely pop up. I think there embarrassed by the commercialization of College Football because we are really here talking about a book about College Football. What happened was the idea that using university dollars somehow for athletics tainted the university. Now i happen to disagree with that idea. I think in fact they made it a terrible mistake by coming to that line of thinking. What they did was basically went to Athletic Directors and said, okay you want to do this thats great but we dont 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 were College Football, because it is the most visible sport, i wont say it is the easiest monetize but the Athletic Directors were successful at monetizing it because the demand was so great. Television contracts increased dramatically. Thanks known as seat donations and i hope we talk about this at some point, increased dramatically. Then the other corporate money, advertising, digital scoreboard advertising, nike, are under armor, other things increase. The model around football evolved to the point where today at the schools that plant the most elite levels, the five super conferences it is not unusual for football to account for anywhere between 50 and 70 of all the revenue flowing into the athletic department. Think about how that influences universities. Think about how it influences the athletic department. Think about the pressure it brings to bear on the athletic departments come on the Athletic Directors and on the football coaches. Thats what i was trying to explore and look at in my book. Host how they have funded a lot of the growth and College Sports. Obviously there are more important for Small Schools than big schools. Its an area where students or beginners say look how my going to continue to pay this cost of education going up. Any thoughts on that . Guest well yes ive 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 paid players. But i have some thoughts. What we see now again at these elite schools is 60 or 655 and the five conferences is the move towards pain what they are calling the phone cost of attendance which is basically giving the players an additional couple thousands of dollars, maybe up to 5000 and they have signed off on it. I have absolutely no issue with that. Think clearly the players are the ones responsible for all of the money, why not give them that money. What i think about about though is down the line. I do not think were quiet at a Tipping Point but i think were getting toward the Tipping Point where the pressure to play the players even more and move the model off the to the edges of the campus representative becomes even more of a semi pro model. Again were talking about football, although i think you could look at basketball. What happens is i dont think the players in a few years are going to be satisfied just with a few thousand dollars. I think they will look around, some of them are quite smart and at least smart enough to see where the money is and how much is there, how much coaches are being paid and asked why they should not be getting more. What i worry about a little bit is the pressure to pay the players even more significant sums of money, or possibly possibly go to a competitive marketplace where you are bidding for a Great Quarterback in california or great linebacker in western pennsylvania and you are bidding up the price youre going to pay for that player. It is not impossible that we will get to that model. As we moved to that model there consequences. The current model begins to unravel. You have lots of tax issues. Is that player then considered an employee . If hes an employee does he need to pay taxes on that . I going to stash the money in a stipend where you get it at the end of the season . If your pain the player significant money on top of the scholarship, are you finally admitting that College Football as its practice that you lead schools truly is a large for prophet or commercial business . And if its that do you then say okay, were going to pay taxes. So then you lose the umbrella of tax protection that exists in the current model where we still pretend these sports are more educational experiences than commercial experiences. Host while there are a lot of consequences. One of them you talk about is title ix. In that model title ix kicks in very strongly. Talk about that. Guest it could be a real problem for title ix. Some folks are talking about the situation were basically football and mens basketball, possibly Womens Basketball would be over here in an almost box if you will in the far corner of the campus. Then you take the other sports, the socalled olympic sports are the nonmoney sports, the nonrevenue sports, i call them the called them the poor sports because they dont 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, i assume out of university dollars at that point in time. In terms of title ix, if youre youre going to pay these other players a lot of money, i would think at some point someone will follow a lawsuit say well if youre paying those players 20000 left you a volleyball player get ten or 20000 or baseball player assuming theres still a Baseball Team in your college. For the soccer or field hockey player. We are entering an uncertain era as we go along. I think a lot of complicated questions that people smarter than me will have to figure out as it evolves. Host your observations are very keen. One thing you focus on a great deal is president ial control and the fact that in your view president ial control has been a failure. My own springs, ive had president say look, they throw their hands up because its a difficult situation. What you think president ial control has not succeeded . Guest the blood test answers and were talking about football, you guessed it that you are going to scale back football at a place like ohio state, remember gordon what happened to him, or notre dame, or usc, or alabama, georgia, or florida, what would happen . I interviewed a number of president s, the president s at the elite Football School seem to run out of town whenever i show up. I interviewed a lot of president s that lower schools and a few at larger schools were brave enough to speak with me. They all basically said the same thing. They would lose their jobs tomorrow they became truly aggressive about policing that. Cracking down on the various abuses, questioning whether it really makes sense to pay a football coach 5,000,000 or 7,000,000, or 4,000,000 dollars per year when the president himself or herself is being paid 500,000 dollars and dollars in a full professor is earning 110,000 at these large universities. Really, they probably would lose their jobs. We side at university of alabama birmingham, the president there year ago tried to eliminate football which is a much smaller program and not especially good one. We can argue whether it makes money or loses money, but he almost lost his head and is now entrenched and came back and said okay bring it back. So next year they will be back competing at College Football at a d1 level. I recognize its incredibly complicated for the president. I absolutely recognize that. It. It is not an easy thing. On the other hand, they are the ones who are charged with leaving the university and with leaving the university mission. So who else is going to lead us and say enough is enough, at a certain point maybe we need to look at this more closely than we do. Im harsh on the president s in the book, i think youre right pointed that out but i think its absolutely fair. I went back and read 40 years worth of congressional testimony, hearings, i read the reports that the nca president ial task force put out, the Knight Commission put out, all the stuff that the president s were associated with. When you read that history, two things are clear to me. One, the president s clearly understand the problem. They talk relentlessly about the escalation it has caused and the impact on the schools and how they would like to change it. The second point is, then they say we are powerless to do anything about it. We need someone outside the university to tell us what to do. The question that is, who is that going to be . Is it the ncaa . I dont think so. Is it 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 away from some of the reforms. I dont know, maybe im being a little harsh, you tell me. Host when i was in congress senator bill bradley, myself we put together the student writes no bill which required schools to disclose the Graduation Rates of their students and their studentathletes. That has led to a lot of Reform Efforts including the apr so im not i also believe that having been a trustee in the region for the last eight years i believe that trustees and regents also need to be more involved. When i first got involved with the University Board i think president s need some of that support to make the right decisions and to make sure the program is running on sound principles and so forth. I throw that out as a point, but the thing that caught me in your book was you talk about the biggest threat to this model, not necessarily being players being paid, concussions or any of those things, but the biggest threat is that a lot of the millennials are losing, their Attention Span is not long focused on these games. Talk about this its interesting. Guest let me throw that one thing in response to what you just said. First first of all, i agree with you 100 on including the regents and the trustees. They absolutely need need to be involved in that. Maybe thats enough. One other thing i would say is on the academic metrics of graduation, the apr and that sort of thing, those are good for sure, i would like to see one other metric. I had a conversation with build on the former president of Princeton University has written books about academics and athletics, their good books. He made the point that what is really needed is a longitudinal study where you look at and maybe pick one year and pick all of the Football Players who were on the team that year and tracked them over a period of time. So five or ten years, look at what happened to them five years out, ten years out, and lets go back and measure them. How many graduated . , and he had a job that is somehow tied to their degree . Was there to useful or were they clustered into majors that would not help them once a graduated . Are they even working . That sort of study. I think the nca can start doing that tomorrow if they were pressured by the president s to do it or by congress. I think the only reason they do not do it as they are afraid what the results would be. Host back to that point for a second, i agree with you, the latter life outcomes are very important. I have talked to the ncaa about this, this is an important issue because the proof is what happens to these kids when they leave school . In my own experience, which is somewhat dated, a lot of the kids did very well, some didnt do so well. At the university of maryland, for for hosted body we do longitudinal studies. We want to see how theyre faring in the marketplace and thats how we come up with the statistic that if you get a degree at maryland it probably means about a Million Dollars morning, over the span of your life. I think this is an important point. I think ultimately it will show the truth here. Guest yes, i do do too. If i could recommend one thing today would be, thats what i would recommend. So to go back to your the question, is playing around with the idea of technology and the impact, the potential disruptive impact on some College Football. I got interested in this after i heard that students relieving university of alabama Football Games at halftime. I soon it was significant enough that nick was upbraided the students the following week for leaving the games. It got me thinking about why would they leave games, what are this generation of students like . The answer is, is, there is a lot more distracted and distractible than probably i was, you were, our, our parents and her grandparents were. I am wondering, the impact can come in two ways. One is is the access point, how you actually experiencing game. Currently the way the tv model works as its full of content, they can charge large Advertising Fees and they can make a lot of money. What i wonder about is downstream basically we are getting it from a lot of different devices whether a phones, and ipad, ipad, does that impact the economics, the Revenue Streams. The other thing i wonder about is if you have a phone in your hand or some other device in hand 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 the stands . I think from talking to people it probably is going to have some impact. So far when i ask Athletic Directors about this they laugh at me a little bit and then they also tell me how they were investing large amounts of money and improving the wifi experience inside the stadium. Im not sure thats 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 the kids are coming to the games less frequently, they want to use their phones and all of those things are distractions. Its an interesting thing because what is happening is the publishing dollars continue to grow so obviously that will continue to support the Business Model. Its interesting when you talk about the bubble and the fact thats where the potential risk is. Host i actually think the real risk is if one of these lawsuits prevail and players are allowed to compete in the marketplace that would open a pandoras box of issues. Guest no, i dont disagree with you. I dont want to overstate the technology. In fact 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. I agree with you, if one of the antitrust lawsuit or one of the other lawsuit, or the player simply is at a point in the future say look, if you want to continue to have football you have to pay is real money. If we go to a more competitive market model, i say, i say all bets are off at that point. Im not even sure that who was the team at that point . Does the university continue to on the team or may be set up as a limited liability corporation. Or for Prophet Corporation over here. 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 in the sports pages we get a little more engaged in those potential impacts than simply framing it as the players are victims and we need to pay the players. Its a lot more complicated than that narrative. Host i think a lot of it focuses on the great athlete who often has access to go to the pros but most kids dont. So you look at a school like a northwestern where the tuition is very high, 70000 a year, the whole 260 kids are getting scholarships. All of a sudden you going to a competitive marketplace, 260 kids wont get 70000 scholarships. A lot of the kids are benefiting from the assistance right now will be left on the sideline. It can point out its a very complicated issue. Switching subjects into the coaches area, and Chapter Three talk about the art of paying a coach not to coach. I was thinking about my alma mater more recently, the university of maryland, what it has done recently. What what are your comments on that . Guest its been an interesting week for coaches. You have up quitting down in south carolina, he said dont use the word retire and forget what word he said. Basically quitting. That was surprising and interesting. You have another one at usc getting fired with his problems in the question is going to be wow, whats going to happen at usc . That he have north north texas where the coach got fired after a blog gave in one of these guarantee games where the team was a sacrifice through one of the elite programs. Then you have maryland. That was interesting, i dont follow maryland football that closely so id say me it was a little bit surprising, then i read the stories and i found the Athletic Directors, its really, really interesting. I wish the writer had focused it more on that. Unless i miss reading it, he was saying we really need someone a lot more exciting than the coach. We need to have a more open offensive system where one of these offenses where yours a lot of points. But then, the other side of it was four months ago, correct me for months ago they extended the contract by a couple of years and at that point i think theyre saying hes the guy to take us to the next level, whatever that next level is here we are four months later firing him in the middle of the season and one of the consequences is he has a number of years left on his contract and go somewhere 38 and the estimates as highs 4 million on his contract between the leftover of this year and a year to more that he had going out. So, im interested in the whole issue of coaching from a standpoint of what are the metrics used to pay this guy. What is it stay about the university and the impacts. Who actually has the leverage in these negotiations . I argue in my book that it is not a true marketplace, its not transparent, the coaches and parent have the leverage. When they have to keep the model running and that helps to subsidize the other sport as well as the other plays and salaries. Its a fascinating thing. Host its a tough decision for anyone and marilyns attendance falling and revenue declining it becomes a difficult choice particularly when a coach has done well academically. Its happening across the country is not unique to marilyn. I agree with you that over the years i think the leverage has been more with the coach than with the school and the a d. I think if you look at and ill give you an example. When i was in congress and the 90s i had a hearing and talking about the fact there wasnt a Million Dollars salary, its kind of funny is gone out of the roof here in a couple years. Who was then the chancellor at lsu in baton rouge and is now of course the mbaa president and fastforward to today 7. 1 doing dollars in alabama so you just see that and a decadelong period or however many years it is, 14 of 15 years the escalation and his salary. I read about that in my look because i think its a good example of what has occurred with coaches salaries particularly in football and basketball probably. Host staying on that point my alma mater for a second, you write about the move to the big 10 which i was in the region at the time. I was a only region to opposing it but more so because the process. It was a very abbreviated process and i thought we needed more deliberation but elaborate on your comments on that subject guest yeah well its interesting from any number of perspectives. You know maryland was interesting at that point in time because they were having or were beginning to have at lease Financial Issues in the athletic department. They were spinning down the reserve fund that they had. They were eliminating i think they eliminated eight sports and correct me if im wrong on that, including the crosscountry, mens Cross Country and or an outdoor track which broke my heart because when i was a High School Track athlete in the mid60s maryland was one of the goto programs in the country, just a terrific track program. You know i went out and interviewed jim delaney and i asked him the commissioner the big 10 and i should disclose the prep school in north new jersey that i went to be with three years ahead of me, great tosca ballplayer. Anyway i asked him about maryland and rutgers and why and really you know again it comes back to money and economics. E the school probably fits the profile of other big 10 schools for a research standpoint in academics but geographically its really valuable because it allows them to lock up geography. It allows them, and helps recruiting wise for the schools but also expands the market for the big 10 Cable Networks. Jim said look there are 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 to big 10 network. So you know the economics are there. Now, for maryland, i dont know enough about the declining attendance but its surprising if a Football Team would have a declining interest there but the amount of money that they can make when they become a fullfledged member of the big 10 and i forget off the top of my head how many years it takes, takes a few. Its going to be a fairly significant increase from what they were getting when they belonged to the acc. I think its probably a magnitude of 10 or 15 additional millions of dollars and you probably know the figures better than i do. So i mean after certain point if they are fullfledged member i think they will be in the neighborhood of 32 million through the conference and we believe that continued to grow if the big 10 continues to thrive. From that standpoint financially , it probably makes sense athletically. Im not so sure, i dont know will they be able to compete at that level, what about the travel costs . What impact will that have on the student athletes . Those are all questions that i think im waiting to hear the answer. Host i think you are right on. Financially it was a very strong move for maryland in being part of a consortium of research is 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 her dollars and cents. Maryland was the fourth Largest Television market that this conference reshuffling the decks to build a bigger conference package, its an interesting phenomena and i always go back to the Supreme Court decision in 1984 the oklahoma case when the ncaa lost the monopoly as the beginning of all this fragmentation really where free but is chasing the almighty dollar. And, do you have any comments on that . I think youre absolutely right. I think it took a couple of years for that to play out. Initially it was interesting, initially if i remember correctly i think the Television Revenue actually fell a little bit for a year or two after the Supreme Court decision, but then by the late 80s it began to spike up and you begin to see the Cable Companies like espn becoming very aggressive. Fox news evolved. They were bidding on contracts and cbs now of course is the exclusive notre dame contract, so that money really begins to flow in the 90s and really explodes in the 2000 particularly at the end of that decade with the contract for 3 billion and now the fcc and espn with the fcc network, big 10 network with this money. Its not surprising from an economic standpoint or a marketplace standpoint, think the Athletic Directors of the schools would say am i in the right conference . And you know maybe i would be better off being at another conference where i could make more money or in the case of the Old Southwest conference, big 12, look at texas a m. They looked at texas getting an exclusive contract with espn and they saw that was going to hurt them for groupwise and hurt them financially because i think the big 12 was the only one that didnt go ahead and form its own conference wide network. It didnt get the boost in Television Money coming in. The Athletic Director at a m basically saw this happening and said you know why do i want to belong to this conference anymore and the fcc being stupid , looked at a m and saw a way to the texas market which is huge and divided texas a m to join the fcc and a m gets a whole lot more money. They now did a 450 or 60 Million Dollar renovation of the football season stadium. All this stuff plays off one another and snowballs so from that standpoint its not surprising at all that they are chasing dollars. From the standpoint of the impact on the schools, while teens and things like that i think is a whole nother issue. I think merlin was in the acc for Something Like 61 years want to jump to the big 10. That has to have some kind of impact. Host you talk about all the spending and the tremendous acceleration in growth, but if you had a crystal ball how is this going to be limited or how do you bring some sense to the whole model . I have heard a number of different things. I had an interesting conversation with a writer from vice spores which is actually quite a good web site in which he suggested that if it goes through a competitive model for you were bidding for players, bidding the amount you are going to need for the players, that is possible that somehow begins to help rationalize the marketplaces from the standpoint of wealth you are maybe going to pay the coach is a little less money because you have less money available. Maybe a forces out some of the excess in some of the facility spending and the athletic department. The back offices. You know i dont know enough to know whether that would happen or not. There is the possibility this Younger Generation of students being less interested. I think if i read correctly last year attendance was actually down overall and that trend slightly downward. Dont want to overstate that but id be a little bit worried about that. The technological impact. Guest i think its slightly up this year. But your point over the trendline, yeah i mean i think the trendline is that it begins to slow a little bit. It has to slow a little bit because i think the revenues from tv are going to slow and i think you see that with espn where its earnings arent quite where they were in the past and part of the attribution to that as well, they pay so much on the next round of contracts that are think the next round of television for the Cable Networks and the regular networks will be but that said what i dont know is the fcc network in the big 10 networks, the separate Inhouse Networks seem to be doing quite well. Maybe those Revenue Streams will help make some of it up. A long answer to your questions i think for the time being it stays basically worth it. I think if we had this conversation 10 years from now i think its going to look different than it looks today and i do think it will be a little less rich or at least will begin to slow down a little bit. Host when you talk about the minor sports, talking to the president of maryland he said that with the toughest decision he ever had to make for those kids who were in those sports as he said but on a National Level the sports really make up our olympic grassroots for olympics. Have you thought about that and what that means and the Business Model of College Sports all these others have to be subsidized that they are important. Guest i thought about it a lot. I havent thought about it and its such a good point you are making. I then thought about the special impact down the line for things like b1 pics or the American Games or their major event worldwide. You are right, that could have an impact as you eliminate some of those sports just to keep the Football Program coming. I would worry about that. You know the sports are tremendously important at that level and i would argue that having gone out to places like wisconsin and kansas state, being there at the crack of dawn watching them practice and go out on the water and watching the impact this 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. They are majoring in real sports and balancing really difficult schedules. They are getting up before dawn to go work out in the heat, you name it. So i would certainly would not want to see those sports go away. This may be an incredibly naive thought but all laid out there there anyway. My thinking about all this is if you truly believe, and i do, that athletics are educational and its important to universities, then why would you be embarrassed about using university dollars, general revenue funds, to pay for it and the answer, i keep coming back to is well its all this excess that worries the president that wants them to but why cant you pull them back at least the olympic sports and even with title ix i dont think its going to make it expensive and i dont think its going to create a situation where you are constantly massaging and playing around with numbers which is what is happening today with the model in order to achieve proportionality with title ix opportunities. I think you can do that, at least with the olympic support and have them inside the budget and fundament university dollars and it wouldnt be that big of a problem. I think if you are transparent and explained it to the other students who in effect are paying for it think probably they go along with it. Host truly football and basketball are the cash cows that support a lot of these olympic sports teams. It is a challenge and doing well in the olympics as part of our National Interests but how this all works out will be different and to your point about all these kids who are going to school, i mean if we always focus on football and basketball obviously the challenge is greater but you walk acrosstheboard and all the other sports and those kids do well academically and they truly are the ideal that you pointed out. Sometimes its overlooked when we talk about these issues. Guest i agree with you and the athletes that ive spoken with, they truly do have real majors. They are premed, there are prelaw, they are studying nursing and studying economics and biology and math. What you think of as a real major and they are majoring in it and balancing it. Its really quite impressive and something that needs to be supported. I think though, but you have seen over the last two decades with the issues of the money support and basketball in particular and the Business Model i call it the football model because its driving the revenue stream, whatever croesus juggling act and this is why youve seen so many sports eliminated in order to keep football running along at the size and scale that it keeps running along it is supposed to be a more modest person that it is. And a fair number of athletes, probably thousands of athletes who have lost scholarships. Host what really adjusts me about your book come you talk about the growth of facilities and coaches salaries and so forth but also academic support which i think is one of the fastestgrowing areas. You kind of elaborate about that but you know obviously these kids are getting a lot of support and thats very positive and obviously the baths were easy situations where certain universities are helping these kids literally get through school by doing their work. So talk about that. Guest gallen was interesting to me, couple of things. One is the rise of academic Sports Centers are programs which is what they are called it something you have seen the last few decades and the schools now spend, the larger the schools are spending basically between two, three, 4 million just on operations for the centers. Grade that covers everything from employees, tutors, reading and writing specialist and learning specialist for athletes with disabilities, learning disabilities, life skills coaches, you name it. So the operational costs annually are quite expensive and then theres the added cost of building the center. I went out to the university of oregon where the school built them a 42 milliondollar academic support center. Its just unbelievable. It looked like a modern museum of art. You could have a nicer facility. Ive visited with the director, a great guy. I think you are right, you can look at it in two different ways that you can save yourself this is a great thing and it poses a moral responsibility to these athletes but if youre going to recruit people and and not a standard deviation behind the mean of the average population you have a responsibility to help them along. As a billet as i write in billiondollar ball theres another way of looking at it and its look this is another example of extraordinary length you have to go to to keep certain athletes eligible to play and hopefully at least on track with a useful degree. Host you have these different ways of thinking about this issue and i think about them in both ways and i write about them that way. I will say though if you look at the scandals and thereve been quite a number of academic scandals and the last decade or so that seem to pop up every month or so, the most recent and dramatic one started a few years ago in North Carolina and is still ongoing for athletes were being funneled into what they called paper classes where all you have to do was bring in a paper and there were no classes. He didnt need to show up for any classes anywhere basically guaranteed a b for an a, that kind of thing. When you look at those what you see as most of the time one way or another to points that to the academics or the come back to the academics. When i think about that but that tells me is the Pressure Point on the centers, the pressure for them to keep players eligible in the sports is just fundamentally dramatic. Its just ramped up so much as pressure to keep the revenue going is ramped up and the pressure to keep these athletes eligible ramped up dramatically over the last decade or so. So its not easy. Gets an interesting comment because as you said there is good and there is bad here. Maryland is a good example. We would always ask the provo are their athletes highly concentrated in a given class and that one question right there will give you an answer whether you have abuse and issues to deal with then again thats where trustees play a role. Host i agree with you and thats a critically important point. I looked at the sec schools and i looked at the football rosters and i looked at the majors they enlisted for the players. You would see disproportionately large numbers athletes in certain majors and they want the harder majors. They were majors with requirements that left more time available. It was that simple and i worry about those athletes and what happens to them and where they end up with that degree later on the other thing is the nca collected data five years ago and they said they were going to make a public. I think a real simple thing to do and again it will be about the politics here, why not on our web site by school, by support was the majors and the athletes. Just put numbers down. I think that would have a fairly interesting impact on the schools because its truly important. Disclosure is very important. I think the more disclosure the more transparency. Host i did have to ask about football and the. Talk about that. When you say there is football and the in the schools or programs. Guest yeah i mean to have this elite group, cluster of schools where there are 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 schools trying to play division i football and it ranges from boise state which is quite good at playing division i football and frankly its difficult to getting the pact while but it hasnt quite happened yet down to the eastern michigans in mexico states the florida Ford International universities, schools that are trying to compete at the highest most expensive level as the other schools that dont have the models that work for them. People dont go to the games and they end up having to buy their own tickets in order to make the the meet the ncaa requirements. They are still paying their coaches a lot of money and still investing huge amounts of money at places like akron and sau stadiums, 60 or 70 milliondollar stadiums that nobody goes to the games. They dont have the Television Revenue because they are not part of Major Conferences where they have Big Television contracts and they dont have their own networks of the revenue stream just doesnt work. I interviewed papa playpen College President s at these types of schools that id have to question why do you do this and whats the opportunity cost of doing it and they would say well from a business standpoint it probably doesnt make any sense because its not working, but we think that if we dont have a Football Program that we are going to be viewed as not a Real University. They actually had president say that to me. They said you know well we wouldnt be a real Real University if we did have a large football stadium or a large Football Team. And then they said you know its also the one thing that we could do to draw the largest amount of attention to our school. I thought about that and i thought you know thats an interesting thing to say. Its a little bit sad for one thing and the other thing is do you mean by that you think you will attract more applicants are more students to come to your school because you have a losing Football Team . That logic doesnt quite work for me and when you look at places like akron which is going through a serious retrenchment with lots of layoffs, 60 milliondollar hole in its longterm Financial Plan and you see all the cutbacks, everything except football. You still dont touch the wall because theirs is magical thinking that if you just have football somehow in the long run its all going to pay off. Is amazing because universities get a enormous the enormous donations to the athletic department. I saw were georgetown got 60 million so it attracts a lot of money and i can see why schools take the risk. Its interesting to watch. Im sure youve been noticing all the fantasy football stuff. What do you think all that means for football and sports . Guest i dont know, you know i watch the nfl and i find it incredibly annoying. They are relentless. If you look at whats been written about it, clearly the idea that you just bet 5 its going to make a Million Dollars is absurd. Its not going to work and theyre really serious money are the ones apparently making the money. The question becomes does it filter down to College Football somehow and do we have fantasy College Football leagues . Maybe we can and on that. My response would be a sure hope not. Host will think you are coming on today. Billiondollar ball, as i said i enjoyed reading it. Guest well thank you, really appreciate being on the show and i appreciate your questions. That was after words booktvs Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed to and watch past the after words programs on line at the tv. Org. What i worry about is the pressure to play the players pay the players can go through a competitive marketplace where you are bidding for Great Quarterback in california or a great linebacker in western pennsylvania and you are bidding up the price that you are going to pay for that player. I mean its not impossible that we will get to that model