More on the state of college byletics at an event hosted the big 12 conference. Athletesters, former and University Officials discuss the pros and cons of the current how things might change if some athletes were paid for performance. From the National Press club in washington, this is about 1 15. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us here. Of our panelion discussion today, organized and sponsored by the big 12 conference. Collegeathletes athletics occupies a unique position in our culture. The athletes themselves can be among the biggest stars in sports. Think about johnny football. Not, theyr stars or will likely work hard. Colter, former northwestern quarterback, testified before the National Labor relations that he spent 50 to 60 hours a week during Training Camp in the summer and once the his commitment to a student, he be said, in light of his athlete. Ns as an a finding of that same nlrb likely a significant step in radically changing further how College Athletes in society are regarded. The regional director ruled that Football Players at northwestern fact ememployees of the school and have the right to form a union. Currently being appealed by northwestern but the battle lines have been drawn. Student athlete . And how should he or she be treated in regard to compensation and rights . Here this afternoon to try and questions or at least shed some light on some of the issues, a distinguished panel. Kristine brennan, a national u. S. A. Today. Forelmore is a sportscaster cbs and cspan. Former professional basketball player and lawyer. President of the National Basketball retired players member of thed Knight Commission on intercollegiate sports. Former director of athletics at Arizona State university. Into05 she was inducted the american volleyball coaches hall of fame and teaches a universitys class at the of louisville. Scholar. Lan, rhodes member of congress. The founder of the National Foundation on fitness, sports a formertion and cochairman of the president s on physical fitness and sports. Rice is a 38 year veteran of the sevene sports world and serves as the womens Athletic Director at of university of texas. Former board member of the National Association of collegeat marketing administrators in 2003. She was inducted into that organizations hall of fame. Director of athletics at the university of kansas. He is a published author and researcher as well as one time coach bill snyders staff at kansas state which he he was just 23 years old. Cut to the heart of the matter here. Student athletes be paid . Who wants to take that one. Is an easy one. Ladies first. Great to be with you and great to be with everyone up here. Not. Utely they are in many ways you can make the case that they are benefits nowot of which College Scholarship years today survey a few ago valued at over 100,000 a career in terms of coaching, exposure, training in addition to receiving a firstclass fineston at some the universities on earth. Athlete student athletes need to be paid i understand the argument. Go into thatill quit a bit over the next hour so. A half or a couple of thoughts for me. I will throw them out there to rolling on this. If we are paying the Football Player are we paying field player . And if not, why not . There is the little law knowned a title ix that changed the playing fields of america. The most important law in our country in the last 42 years and we have just begin to it work its magic. And if you have a daughter or a niece, a grand a daughter you know how important that law is and wait until these for president ing and running universities and running businesses. Ignore that cant law unless we decide to go to an economic model for college that leaves the university in the academic setting and bar the door if we go there. I think that my overall feeling is that themy, notion of be careful what you wish for. Likeot so sure we would what we create if in fact we start paying athletes and have a whole separate pro league and lose what has been such a popular piece of all of our lives which is that College Sports experience. Watching,ying or being on campus, cheering for the stow dent athletes, many of right way,ing it the are going to graduate and give back to the universities for the 5060 years and the communities. Are there problems in College Sports . You bet. But paying athletes is not the way to solve them. Go right down the line. Lenny . Ually. Ould agree concept you mean by paying. I look at the relationship and more be ben factor, beneficiary. The amounts oft dollars coming in based on the exploits of the student athlete there be balance in the equities . Absolutely. Of are they in the form salary . Beuld the whole relationship in the form of terms is wages, whichions and benefits to ememployeemore than beneficiary. I would say no. Take a look at how to balance the equities without making it a pure employ cree employer relation shall. There was a lawsuit filed yesterday which is relying on the the fair labor or fair and whys labor act student athletes under minimumhip are not paid wage which becomes inrus becomee since other students are paid the minimum wage and are able to some kind of pay check. But in the end, i do believe that our culture in College Sports and the things that we have loved about College Sports under assault by those who always talk about getting paid. Really filtered down to young people. Timest tell you how many i talked to adolescents and people who are athletes and want orbecome College Professional athletes but talk idea of getting paid without understanding the true value the scholarship and the grant. We can talk about any number of things with regard to the benefits that student athletes besides the education. Board, books and tuition. With some balance type of payment. Also medical benefit. Number do we put on the medical benefits and hoefully reform continue those beyond eligibility. If you havent received your degree through your eligible, so many schools are moving in the direction of providing those opportunities way beyond eligibility. You likehen finally, i would people to fully underand it when talking about true val, lees versusagent nonscholarship students. Inare talking about 29. 4000 connect is what most students studentss what mott who have come out of school at the senior career that is the average debt that they are carrying. Scholarship athletes are carrying nothing. Thee, real value of education and scholarship that the student athletes are receiving hasnt been articulated well enough and allowed those who assault that ofticular culture to kind grab a foothold in the argument. And i think that needs to be changed. As i said before, thetally do not agree in employeremployee relationship benefactor,e the beneficiary even though there is symbiotic relationship is one that we need to look at strongly that weinto context so can make a definition as far as what student athletes mean to an institute and vice versa. Two versus zero. Lisa . Versus zero. And i will take this one step further. Agree with both speakers who made a point thus far. Would always stand in line with what you just heard in the panel before this one and that has to be done to financially maintain a sustainable environment of a uniquely American Culture of sports toamateur college and universities and all that positive that has been thened over a century and a half century once you became multigender by adding women through title ix and multiethnic serious work in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The benefit is boundless because of the concept of paying for someones education pause they have a unique talent and then it an inclusive environment. Athlete and coach and senior official at the university of Southern California that worked specifically with the olympic sports and then becoming the athletics director at arizona i was overseeing the entire enterprise and getting extremely close to basketball football coaches and making maneuvers therein what has been altivated over time is beautiful marriage if you will within an Athletic Program that think incredible citizenry for the united states. I think that in addition to said. Hing that has been i dont want to be redundant. Enough not done a good job of expounding on the benefits that already exist rather remarkable and unique american system that beelieve at all costs should sustained. And i think by paying athletes are creating an unsustainable environment. You are not going to pay tom and to payng to be able mary. If you think you are, you are naive. Out there thaty is requesting to tolerate that. Anything that would render this that wety situation are delicate situation that we are already in financially littlee it even a wobblier while universities are as theyo make sure invest in the Athletic Programs iey continue to flourish would raise my hand and vote against paying athletes ten times over. Gender relateddish somehow. It will be a question of playing the Football Player and the not payingplayer and the ten i tennis player or rowe. It. Ll of you come at this from a number of perspectives yak is your thought on this . Should be paid. And that is definitional. Let me explain. Going to start over and rebuild College Sports in you may first of of all not want to put it on your universities. Hasre the only nation that done that. We have this tailing withing the dog. Are importantly if you had system generating billions of dollars you would address the the players. When len and i were teammates at inyland we got 15 a month laundry money. So did every other athlete. Introduced legislation i created a reform bill and for 300 sty bend for every athlete. The fact is that i do think you create equities across the board for every athlete women or get a basic sty pend that allows them to have a there isi think that plenty of money in College Sports if you took the dollars out there and redistributed them. The fact of the matter is, it is just a matter of time before this system blows up because there is so much going on that the suspected temperature will blow up and system will blow will be sitting there saying should the players seven more. They get anys education. I have yet to see one strong study that shows me address division one kids leaving 10 left what hasey happened to them. I would like to see that. You tell me that they get an education. I would like to see what type of life these kids who didnt go living and iare think that would be the ultimate proof. The question is yes, i think deserve equities. I dont think they need to be employees. A way to bring pie. A piece of the calkris . I dont disagree with the overall goal of allowing financial to expand to the point where the true cost of the sport. I think weve been on record for a long time of saying thats where we need to be. There were votes on this years ago and because of the unwieldiness of our overall governing body we couldnt get to a consensus. And today were faced with this. But the whole idea of remuneration for someone who is a the age group were talking about, 17 to 23 years old, who often make a decision to go to an institution for various reasons and once we talk to them about the college experience, sports is only a part of it. Theres real College Athletics experience begins in the admissions office. Theyve got to meet some criteria, agree to some benchmarks. Frankly, its a volunteer type of situation. No one is twisting your arm to embark upon what today ncaa and College Division athletics requires. Its not easy and its not for everybody. If it was, everybody would be doing it freely. They come with a gift. They do have to adhere to academic goals and standards and progress toward degree in order to even maintain eligibility. Its not remuneration and its not payforplay. I think the amount of dollars that we generate everybody mixes revenue with sort of free cash flow. What we do with revenue goes back to the experiences of these young people. There are some student athletes there are some student athletes that leave college with debt. If theyre on a scholarship, they could leave with some debt. Thats why we want delta to be covered by wellresourced institutions if they can. And it will be permissive legislation. The notion that this is a pay for play activity flies right in the face of what its really about. You go back to the 1950s, Darrell Royal when he got his job at the university of texas in 1957 went to the Athletics Council at texas and says ive got my coaching staff. Now i want one more coach. They said why . He said i dont want this coach to know anything about football. I want this to be the academic and brain. Brain coach. E his name was ian hewlett. This was in 1957. Daryls answer to the alumni and donors, he said it does me absolutely no good to bring these guys into this College Setting and not have them advance to a degree. They will be playing football it but serious about what rolely matters to me is finish with a degree. How many years later, were talking with that same question. Shane . I guess i have the benefit of going last and agreeing with everyone. At least in part with each. If not all, with some. I would position myself somewhere between the two ends. One is saying that i in reflecting on the last panel who at the very least was very entertaining. I dont know if we can live up to the bar they set. But i think they concluded with making comments about how we seem to be focused on the 1 of the student athlete who brings a lot of talent to the table and matriculates to the nba and the nfl, etc. And we are sort of ignoring the 99 of the others. Now, having said that, i will defer to my elders and say ive always heard about laundry money and always thought we should have Something Like that. Im not sure why it ended back then. But we have young men and women who could use a little more to function around our campuses and in our college towns. Having said that, i think weve this isht of, and maybe just personal. There is thousands upon thousands of young boys and girls that that dont get to play at the bcs level and would give their left arm to have the privilege of doing what our young people do on our College Campuses. Im somewhere between everyone. I believe in the word equities was used previously and i think that was a very good term. At the same time, i believe that some of the individuals on the Previous Panel were talking about what number do you put on our current full rides, the i heard 60, 70, 80,000 by the time you factor in and chris is the expert everything from gear to medical, to travel, everything we do to compensate our young people with. But im sure well flesh all these points out as we go along. I think that leads to the next question, which is what is the cost of attendance . How do we quantify what a student athlete should get . We know what they get now. Depending on what university they are at. At kansas im sure you could tell me what that is. But what should that figure be . What should it include and what should it not include . Anybody have any thoughts on that . Since tom brought up the 15 laundry money. Did he borrow some from you . Huh . Did he borrow some money from you . No. Dirty laundryf there but 15 a month went from anything to buying a record or an opportunity to go on a date once a month for those of otherwho didnt have any resources. One of the things we need to focus on when we talk about full cost of attendance and subsidizing, we have to talk about need. So many times we think across the board, but there are athletes, student athletes who dont have that need, the demonstrated need for those dollars, be it because they come from a family of means or theyve had other types of means. But in the end, i think it is being a part of the university community, being on a level that makes you feel like youre a part of this community, as i said, whether its being able to buy a tape, being able to go to the movies, being able to do something that the average student is capable of doing, and i think that we lose sight of the fact that its not just about, you know, when people make the argument, paying for, you know, the services rendered. This is about making you feel as though youre part of the university instead of feeling as though youre isolated and something different. So can i itemize and categorize each and every one of those things . Not necessarily. But its like something the Supreme Court said, you know it when you see it. Right. And you understand it. But going back to the situation where you have administrations and other of institutions speak of the inability to be able to put the resources forward. I think if its needsbased across the board and all of athletics, i think it is something that is affordable and certainly necessary. But overall and i want to get back to something that tom said real quickly. When you talk about the athletes and what do they do 10 years from now, i think thats Something Else we havent focused on, and that is learning to develop some type of advocacy, whether students are advocates for themselves or others being able to get the education that they truly want. The impetus is on the student athlete. They have to be an advocate for their education. If youre practicing beyond the time you need to study, if youre going to miss an exam or be placed at a disadvantage for an exam, you should be able to say that and attend the class or attend the exam without fear of retribution, which i believe unfortunately exist. Thats a bigger issue. You know, having played that that, that has to be focused on. It becomes the responsibility of the student athlete. If you take away the fear to be advocates for themselves. Capable ofey are not doing it. Athletes that they are not ge