United We Ball

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Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media.

I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

The 2024 Olympic Games are now behind us.

A quadrennial reminder that the genetic lottery is real and some people can actually fly.

I had the incredible opportunity to attend part of the Paris Olympics through a program with Nike.

No, I did not see Snoop or Martha, but I did get a chance to watch Noah Lyles lean in with his whole chest.

I got to cheer for U.S.

Beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower.

And just to be clear, I'm 100% Team Jordan deserves her medal.

She was extraordinary.

I got to see her.

Watching the Olympics reminds me so much of how sports shapes how we see our world, how we see ourselves.

In this episode, we're going to dive into a topic that's been a game changer in the world of college sports and social media shorthand.

Name, image, and likeness, or NIL.

Some of you may be asking yourselves, on a show about how we dissect public policy issues and solve for change, why would collegiate athletics be a critical issue?

To paraphrase an oldie-but-goody, it's the economy, friends.

Kids head off to college to prepare to earn a living, and for decades, athletically gifted students have been the source of lucrative earnings for everyone but themselves.

To put this in context, collegiate athletics is a business, by the way, that collectively generates $1.3 billion in revenue every single year, billions of dollars generated by workers who don't see much in the way of wages or ownership.

Does that sound familiar?

The tensions in college sports reflect a broader discussion about labor rights, representation, gender parity, capitalism, and fundamentally about self-determination.

And because we can't solve everything everywhere all at once, we're going to start our conversation about these major constructs with the transformation that is NIL right here.

First, let's talk about what NIL actually means.

Again, in the simplest terms, NIL stands for name, image, and likeness.

These are three elements of a person's identity that can be used for commercial purposes.

I tell you that as a former lawyer.

Think about the athletes on your screens, on billboards, or the ones promoting products on social media.

In the past, college athletes were prohibited from profiting from their NIL while still playing for their school.

This meant that despite generating billions of dollars in revenue for universities, television networks, and the NCAA,

student athletes couldn't make money off of their own name, image, or likeness.

Now, this all started to change in 2019 when California passed the Fair Pay to Play Act.

College sports is a multi-billion dollar industry, but student athletes are prohibited by the NCAA from getting anything more than a scholarship for their effort.

California might be about to change that.

My name is Nancy Skinner.

I'm a state senator from California and I have introduced a bill which would give college athletes the right to their name, image, and likeness.

So NCAA national organization.

But this law was a state law and it was groundbreaking because it allowed college athletes in California to sign endorsement deals and to, for the first time, profit from their name, image, and likeness without losing their eligibility to play.

Soon, other states followed and pressure mounted on the NCAA to change its rules.

By 2021, the groundswell of state actions forced the NCAA, who had long denied these rights on the grounds of amateurism, to give all athletes across all college sports those NIL rights.

Look, this was a major shift in the landscape of college sports, but it didn't come without challenges and complexities.

So, why is NIL important?

Proponents will tell you it's a matter of fairness and equity.

College athletes, particularly in high-profile sports like football and basketball, generate significant revenue for their schools.

Yet for decades, they couldn't share in the profits.

The NIL policy corrects this imbalance by allowing students to earn money through endorsements, sponsorships, social media deals, and more.

This new fiscal model will require radical changes to the ways in which the NCAA and its power conferences operate, but it will benefit student athletes.

For women in athletics, it also changes how their sports are valued at schools that observe Title IX, but don't necessarily give it or them the respect they deserve.

NIL also has significant implications for governance and implementation, especially as the law rushes to catch up with those taking advantage of a new reality.

There are questions about how to regulate NIL deals and who should do it.

In particular, how do we ensure that this new wild west of endorsements doesn't create unfair advantages for certain schools or lead to the exploitation of young athletes who are caught between this world of being amateurs and budding professionals.

Plus, there are tax implications of NIL earnings, the question of the role of agents, and how to protect student athletes from unscrupulous businesses.

As NIL takes off, state and federal laws need to catch up.

So do the NCAA and its power conferences, as Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petiti is well aware.

In this new model, student athletes will have sort of three areas that they can take advantage of.

They'll still retain their scholarships, the academic benefits, the connection to academics.

That's vitally important.

They'll be able to receive direct compensation from their institutions.

And third, they'll be able to capitalize on NIL to the extent that their NIL rights have value either locally or nationally.

But we've got to build that model.

And that's going to require change and a tremendous amount of collaboration.

And then there's looking back.

For students who contributed to the bottom line for years without directly receiving compensation, the next question is one of remediation.

As of July, legal counsel representing thousands of Division I athletes came together with the NCAA's Power Five conferences to file detailed terms of an antitrust lawsuit with the potential to reshape the business of college sports.

And as part of the settlement, the NCAA must distribute damages to past athletes as well as current ones.

One of the first moves is outlining the particulars on how former athletes will share in $2.78 billion in damages that the NCAA has agreed to pay and the framework of a new system for revenue sharing.

NIL is reshaping the power dynamics in college sports.

It is giving athletes more control over their own futures and it's forcing institutions and governing bodies to rethink how they operate.

For instance, some schools are now offering NIL education programs, teaching athletes about contracts, financial management, and brand building.

This intersection of education and sports is a new frontier in public policy because it has implications for how we think about the business of sports and the fundamental necessity of education.

And as we know, this is going to continue to evolve.

But whenever money enters the equation, so too do questions of who gains an advantage and who tries to take back power.

How can NIL lead to a transformation of labor rights and opportunity without compromising young people at the start of their careers?

On today's episode, we'll be joined by Dominique Foxworth, retired NFL cornerback who served as both the NFL Players Association president and chief operating officer of the National Basketball Players Association.

With him, we will explore what that road ahead looks like for student athletes across the NCAA.

We'll also discuss the Dartmouth men's basketball team's decision to unionize in order to collectively bargain for salary, health insurance, and travel arrangements.

Next, we'll chat with Chicago Sky Forward and Women's National Basketball Player Association Vice President Breonna Turner about how NIL is opening up opportunities for women in sports, what she learned from the WNBPA negotiations a few years ago, and what it will take to make sports more equitable for women in college as they see expanded opportunities to head into the pros.

Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class.

They're reviewing the American Revolution.

The British were initiating force, and the Americans were retaliating.

Okay.

Where did they initiate force?

It started in their taxation without representation.

Why is that wrong?

The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights, and by encroaching on individual rights, they cannot protect them.

Welcome to eighth eighth grade at Challenger School.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.

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Start creating with Adobe Express at adobe.com slash go slash express

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Dominique Foxworth, welcome to Assembly Required.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you.

Okay, so let's take a moment in the Wayback Machine.

You're a high school senior.

Where are you choosing to attend college and why?

Well, I chose the University of Maryland and I chose it honestly because they weren't that good.

And I thought, being the arrogant high school player I was that I would go there and start right away and that would be the best place for my career

and so tell me what happened I got there a little bit early and I wasn't as good as I thought I was I ended up starting by the end of that year and we ended up being a really really good team we won 10 games that season only lost one i started the last couple games as a true freshman and played well enough but uh it was a rude awakening academically and athletically for a high school uh a former high school senior who thought he was just going to go dominate like he always did.

So if you could go back in time and warn him, would you have done things differently?

I don't think so because it worked out as well as I could have hoped because, I mean, sometimes we all need to be humbled a little bit, get a little wake-up call.

So I think that was good for me.

ended up playing anyway and we had a good season.

Then that kind of gave me my first introduction to like the business of professional football.

Prior to that, I really thought we were all just one big happy team.

And then I realized that money got involved and it changed the dynamics between the coaches, the players, the fans, and even other student athletes.

Understood.

So I've given our listeners a primer on name, image, and likeness.

And you've just mentioned what it would have been like to peek behind the curtain and understand the professional side of sports before you got there.

What would it have meant to you and your colleagues as student athletes to have had access to name, image, and likeness?

Yeah, it would have been a shift in the power dynamics.

I think while the coaches and teams and conferences have most of the power now, the players have more power than they ever have in the past.

And back then, I remember when we went to the Orange Bowl and then we came back and our coaches all had new cars and were negotiating new contracts and we got

DVD players.

We got portable DVD players and hoodies.

That was our bowl gift.

And

a lot of, because we were a good team, now the coaches had access to new players, which is when it started to get really ugly.

We had access to more talented players.

So some of the guys that were there, they got their scholarships taken and they got sent to lower level schools.

And we as players didn't have that

tool in our tool belt.

We weren't getting any money and we didn't have the ability to transfer the way that current players have now.

And so all the players are getting shipped out.

And the guys who were unhappy with their situation and maybe wanted to go somewhere else, they had no leverage to do that.

Well, you mentioned it was a power dynamic.

And one part of the power was that the coaches had the resources, had the ability to change your future by sending you to a different school, by not elevating you where you were.

But the other part of that is the relationship, the one-to-one relationship that players have with coaches.

And I'm asking this because one critique I've heard about name, image, and likeness and paying student athletes is that it shifts the dynamic from mentor and mentee to boss and worker.

Given those dynamics, talk to me a little bit about what it would have meant to you as a young player who came in a little cocky, had to sort of figure out where he fit in, but was part of a growing power team.

What would it have meant for you in terms of the dynamic between you and your coaches?

Yeah, I think that whoever

would say that it shifts, that the name, image, and likeness now shifts it from mentor the mentee to uh

employer and employee I think has not participated as an athlete because it's always been employer employee the power dynamics were always that of um a boss and a laborers the difference is the laborers had little to no power when i was playing and now the laborers have a little bit more power and there's a

there's benefits and there's drawbacks to everything so I would accept any criticism that comes with like some of these young players have power and are using it in a way that is not in their best interest and may not be in the best interest of the team or the school or the future of college sports

or the future of college sports, which I'll accept that.

But I think the same was true in the past.

It's just those decisions were being made only by coaches.

So the coaches had the power, they had the money, and we approached the pandemic.

Then we start to hear conversations about NIL legislation.

It's being pushed forward at the state legislative level.

Student athletes are starting to get excited because there seems to be a tension.

What were your hopes for student athletes in college sports as NIL legislation started to be pushed forward?

Yeah, my hope was that they could finally reap some of the benefits that they deserved.

I think the complexity of the college sports system is such that the revenue is largely generated by football and a little bit by basketball.

And that revenue goes into the pockets of coaches and athletic directors, but it also is the revenue used to fund a bunch of the other non-revenue sports that we all think deserve to be at schools.

I'm just not sure that the players should be the ones that are paying for it, that the football and basketball players should be the ones that are paying for those sports to exist.

How would you do it differently?

Well, I I think we're moving in a better direction, but I do think that we have to accept as much as we want to pretend, and I, as much as anyone, enjoy the facade of amateur athletics and like how you felt in high school when you wanted to beat your rival across town.

Like we convinced ourselves that that still exists in college, but it doesn't.

Not for the major sports.

Those things have been professionalized for a long time.

So I think there is a separation between the pro sports and the non-revenue sports.

But some of the non-revenue sports have the popularity to grow into something bigger and they should be allowed to do so, but not at the expense of the players who

are generating the revenue because most of those players will not go on to the next level.

I think often people look at football and basketball players and say it's okay that they're not getting paid because they're going to go make millions of dollars.

I think everyone knows that the vast majority.

of the players in college athletics are not going on to do that.

The NCAA has a series of commercials that say all of our players are going to go pro in something other than the sports that they play in.

So it's kind of unfair that at a moment when they have

a product and it's themselves and their athletic ability that is incredibly valuable and marketable that they are not allowed to benefit from it.

Well, given that situation, given what you've described as this moment of opportunity, How would you evaluate the rollout of NIL rights?

In what ways have student athletes benefited?

And where are the issues?

Where are they being stymied?

So having access to compensation is great.

I think we keep calling it NIL and this is all of us in the sports.

And I think we forget, or all of us who watch and enjoy and even participate, which makes us forget what it stands for.

It stands for name, image, and likeness.

So it's a suggestion that you can endorse, frankly, other products

or appear on the video games, but it's not, that's not what it's come to represent in college athletics.

It's pay for play,

which if it's going to be pay-for-play, I think that that makes you employees, which they aren't employees, which precludes them from

access to workers' compensation.

It precludes them from access to insurance after their career is over in college.

It precludes them from a lot of rights that we afford to workers.

It keeps them from being able to

form a union to negotiate for their rights.

So I think that while it's a start and it feels good for players to get access to some revenue, we also have to understand that it does not establish them as employees.

And it's still not the institutions up until now with the settlement, maybe that changes in the future.

But up until now, it's not the institutions paying them for their name, image, and likeness.

It's separate entities paying them for their ability to play on the team, but calling it name, image, and likeness.

Well, that's a perfect segue because one of the reasons this topic fascinates me is the parallels we can draw to other labor fights throughout history and this larger debate and conversation we're having in this country about labor and about the rights of workers.

And in sports, unionization has always been extremely important in providing leverage for workers who will never be as wealthy as professional team owners.

They will never be positioned, as you say, while they're in college.

Most of them will never be positioned to actually leverage this beyond that day of graduation.

And yet they are not treated as employees.

They are not given that capacity.

So two questions that kind of come from there.

And the first is, you have, you've worn many hats.

What drew you to the players union?

Can you walk us through how you came from a college sport where there was no name, image, and likeness, or even the facade thereof?

And the time when you realized that you needed to be at the table, making certain that the players unions had the power?

When I was drafted to the Denver Broncos, there was an older player who was a great player for the Denver Broncos named Rod Smith.

And when I showed up there, he pulled me aside and said that I was going to be involved in the union.

That was plain and simple.

And sometimes it's about that legacy and it's about that influence because I had no idea.

I didn't even, I barely knew the NFL Players Union existed.

I, like most young boys, wanted to be a professional athlete.

And so I dreamed about the day when I could walk across the stage or put on a helmet and say i am a member of the nfl but what i learned as being a part of the union is that the nfl is not responsible for all the things that make being a pro football player cool they aren't the union is the union had to fight for the rights for players to make anywhere near the amount of money that they make right now the union is the reason why players have uh

why players have insurance and why players have pensions going forward.

And honestly, the union was started in the 50s 50s in order to get players clean jacks and socks.

Like prior to the existence of the players union, the teams wouldn't even wash their clothes.

And so that was the foundation of the union.

And I learned that.

And I recognized as we went further on that

there was no benevolence by business owners.

It's just not the way that it works.

We all understand that collective action is the only real power that you have in any part of society or in any industry.

And we realized as players, no matter how big and strong we were or how talented we thought we were, no one was going to give us anything.

We had to take it.

Well, you not only took it, you became the president of the NFPA,

and then you decided to walk across the street to a different league.

And this is my second question.

When you became the chief operating officer for the NBA Player Association, talk to me a bit about what you brought with you from the NFL to the NBA and what you wish more people watching these sports could understand?

Yeah, I think that the

one of the most difficult things about being in a union is trying to

create some solidarity around particular issues that impact players differently.

And so in football, it was a lot easier to create that solidarity because it felt like we were much closer in class with the exception of quarterbacks.

Quarterbacks always felt like they were a a little bit different.

They were a little bit above, they were a little bit closer to management until they find out eventually that they aren't.

And all the star quarterbacks that we had, I remember Peyton Manning was one of those guys until the Colts cut him because he injured his back.

And then he's like, oh, yeah, I'm just one of you.

Same with Drew Brees.

He was one of those guys until the Chargers moved on from earlier in his career because he messed up his shoulder.

Like they all realized at some point they are just like us.

The thing that I noticed when I went to the basketball union was they had a lot more quarterbacks.

It was a lot more stars over there with real legitimate star power.

And they matured to the point where they become part of ownership.

Like Michael Jordan is an owner.

And I think lots of players had that view.

So having an understanding that the responsibility is to cooperate with the union, but also the real responsibility is to defend our rights first and foremost.

That was a little bit more difficult with the basketball union than it was with the football union.

Well, one of the reasons I'm asking these questions is that we need to paint the picture for the audience.

Here at Assembly Required, the goal is for us to take these complicated conversations and break them down into pieces that people can understand and access, but also to connect dots that people don't see as being even in the same frame, let alone the same picture.

You are a professional athlete.

You are a labor leader.

You are an advocate for the marginalized.

And you are someone who has used your voice, sometimes at risk, to lift up the needs of students who don't seem to think they have a place or a posture to offer their own opinions.

Walk me through how you made the decision, you know, starting in Marilyn.

Like what brings you to this moment where you're able to connect those pieces together?

Yeah, I think it's experience.

And honestly, it's also like all of us have had mentors and experiences in our lives.

I think being black in America, frankly, puts you in a position where you're often understanding that the system isn't designed for you.

And no matter how much, and I was a good athlete.

So there were certain doors that were opened for me.

There was a, from the time I was little, all the way until business school and beyond, there are certain benefits that I got because people were impressed or enamored with my athleticism.

But I would never, ever, and my parents are to thank for this, I would never, ever forget that there are parts of society and individuals in society that will make things more challenging for me.

And life in some ways is going to be more challenging for me and for other people who have

are from other marginalized groups.

So like for women and for black men and immigrants and all those people, like I recognize myself as more a part of that than any other institution that would allow me in.

At no point did I feel like, oh yeah, I'm now on the other side.

I now have enough money to not be persecuted.

I now have the degree to put me in a position to not have hurdles to clear.

I never felt that.

And I think that was from the time I was little to the time all these jobs that I've had and all these opportunities, I always kind of felt like part of the people who needed collective action to get the rights that you felt you deserved.

Well, speaking of people who are in positions that feel elevated, but who understand just how close they are to the edge, earlier this year, Dartmouth's men's basketball team voted to unionize in order to collectively bargain for salary, for health insurance, for travel arrangements.

Is that a move in the right direction for college athletes?

And what does does it say to you that this started at Dartmouth?

Yeah, that.

So I absolutely think that it is a move in the right direction because it gives players a voice and it gives student athletes a voice.

I think we have to be honest about the differences at all these institutions.

Becoming employees and forming a union is not going to be the right answer for every school because if there is no revenue to be generated, then

you consider yourself employee and you will get taxed on your scholarship if that is considered compensation, but your school is not necessarily generating revenue.

So I think for some of those places, this might be a complicating factor.

But for the

players who are in sports that generate quite a bit of revenue, I think it's incredibly important for them to have a place at the table.

I think it's a mistake to believe that we can construct a system that's going to be, it's going to function perfectly.

The way I think we come to any well-functioning institutions or systems in society is about having equal power on all sides.

And it's kind of a natural selection.

It's like you don't get to design the right

system.

The system designs itself because they're two

or three or four or five entities with equal power brushing up against each other until they get a smooth running system, if that makes sense.

No, it makes complete sense.

How do you situate this decision, this unionization decision at Dartmouth, and the work that you've done?

When you look at what's happened in the last few years, the unionization of the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee or the 2020 collective bargaining agreement for the players in the WNBA, when you hear about what's happening with labor, what do you think about

what this means for the advance of labor rights?

Are we in a new moment?

Are we where we've always been?

It just looks a little brighter, but we'll blink and it's gone.

Where do you fit yourself on the spectrum of optimism?

Yeah,

I think I find myself on the brighter side of optimism.

But I also recognize that

we aren't on a ride.

We are kind of controlling it.

So I think to determine if we are in some kind of new golden age, because we definitely went through a pretty dark period for unions and respect for unions and appreciation for what unions mean to our society.

But I do think that we're at a point where there's an opportunity that not only in sports, but as you mentioned, like the Volkswagen Union and beyond, that there's an opportunity for us to

re-appreciate, I guess, the history of unions and the benefit that they they provide to

us, the workers, like the not the capital, but the employees in our society.

Well, speaking of that, you know, labor unions have long grappled with disparities, disparities of race and gender and region.

Sometimes they do a good job, sometimes they do a very poor job.

What are the challenges and the opportunities you see for workers and unions with the entry of student athletes into the labor conversation?

How does that change the dynamic?

How does that start to change the dialogue?

Yeah, I think the disparities will always exist.

The disparities are lessened when you give power to the powerless.

And I think unionization is fundamentally, that's the point of unionization.

Unfortunately, within those unions, the disparity is still going to exist.

And like that.

Understanding how Title IX is going to be impacted by the future of unions is a huge question.

I'm not under the illusion that because we give power to certain groups, that it's automatically going to be a perfect system.

I think it's something that

you have to keep working on and keep fighting for.

And those issues are going to pop up.

The question then becomes, what about what happens to these sports?

So what about what happens to these people?

I don't know.

We will cross that bridge too, but that's not a reason not to move to a more fair system.

So I wish I had all the answers, but I do know that if we turn college sports, the revenue generating college sports professional, I think that does make life a lot more difficult for the non-revenue generating sports, which are disproportionately women's sports that are, we have many of those sports now and they're successful and popular now as a result of Title IX.

So I'm not sure that how the courts will react to.

uh professionalization of football.

Does that mean that you then now have to pay all the other sports the same amount?

And does that mean that some of those sports will get folded?

Like these are lots of questions that we don't have the answers to, and they're going to be tough hurdles to climb, but that doesn't mean that we stick with the status quo, which we already know is unfair.

Unfortunately for you, you just hit on an important question for me.

And I know you said you don't have all the answers, but I'm going to see if you have an answer to this one.

So we know that one component of this changing landscape are the NIL collectives.

And these are those school-specific organizations that can pool funds from a wide cross-section of donors that help create the NIL opportunities for student athletes.

The problem is that while we're seeing that more than half of the top 100 college athletes with name, image, and likeness deals are women, it's been reported that 95% of the collective dollars are still being distributed to male athletes.

This disparity is emerging at a time when women's college sports, as you pointed out, appear to be on the rise.

But this gender gap also suggests that collectives are violating Title IX.

And for those who don't know what Title IX is, Title IX stipulates that schools must provide male student athletes and women student athletes with equal treatment and benefits.

You've just articulated one of the deep concerns that has come along with this professionalization of sports.

So.

Being the person who has all the answers on this,

what role should parents, donors, concerned listeners of a podcast?

What role should we be playing in raising awareness about these new gaps and these new challenges?

Yeah, I think the best thing we can possibly do is eliminate non-revenue sports.

And I don't mean to fold them up.

I mean to watch them, to go to those games, to increase the TV ratings.

If those are sports that are valuable to you,

if those are things that you care about, then you support them.

And that generates the revenue needed to support those sports and to fund those programs and to compensate um the athletes who are participating in them the toughest thing about all of this and i know it's a situation that we're in and i don't know if i have the perfect analogy but it feels like when college sports were created

they were created for a system that existed then it's kind of like the bike being invented And rather than going on to invent a car, we've been tacking all these other things onto this bike to keep making it work when we realize that, no, we need a bus now.

We need a car.

We need a plane.

Stop trying to make this bike fly.

And that's what it feels like to me now.

And that's why it's so difficult to make it work perfectly now because we're like, yes, there are disparities in college athletics.

So let's remake this whole system in a way that I think would be,

would function better in the current state of things.

And we just can't.

We can't bring ourselves to blow up something that we've known and loved.

And so we have to work within these confines.

And it makes it really challenging because often we do get put in this position where it's either you defend the football players or you defend the volleyball team, which is not fair at all.

One of the reasons it's so hard for people to make the switch or to expand their minds is that in 2022, 2023, the NCAA generated nearly $1.3 billion in revenue, the bulk of which came from media rights and marketing deals that are tied to its various sports championships events.

Separate from that, the Bull subdivision of the top tier Division I college football annually brings in roughly 470 million to the conferences that participate.

Given what you've just said about how we are taking a bike and trying to make it fly, in what ways should discussions around name, image, and likeness spark a different conversation about revenue sharing as one of the ways to finance sports at the collegiate level.

Yeah, I think that's the answer to start with:

there is revenue being generated.

The revenue is being

put back into these schools to build new facilities.

It's being put into

supporting some of the non-revenue generating sports.

It's being

put into the salaries of the coaches of the basketball and the football team.

The money is there and it's being used to

prop up these programs.

It doesn't mean that the money can't be redistributed.

I'm not looking to make college football coaches volunteers, but it does kind of strike me that there are strength coaches who make over a million dollars.

Like that money is coming from somewhere.

And while these are nonprofit institutions in most cases,

it's kind of a bit of a misnomer because there is money there.

And this is, again, the difficulty with trying to revamp a system because not all the schools in this system do exist that way.

The top schools are professional sports.

Like we can't lie to ourselves.

And you're in Georgia, University of Georgia, like they get 10 players drafted every year.

It's a semi-pro league.

They are a semi-pro team.

Let's be honest about that.

And many of those players are super talented and deserve to be compensated for their skill.

That's not the same thing at, I don't

Georgia State, let's say.

They're also very good players, but it's not the same as UGA.

So trying to make those two schools or institutions or teams operate in the same system to me feels like a fundamental flaw because things that fit Georgia in their football program, they're not going to fit everywhere else.

They might work at Alabama, but it's not going to work at North Texas.

It's just trying to figure out how we move to a system.

And it feels like a lot of the conferences or yeah, it feels like the conferences are moving to a place that they are dividing the semi-pro-ish teams from the rest of the teams.

I think that's where we finally end up.

If it takes a decade or more from now, we do end up with some real division between the schools that can pay their players real money and the schools that are closer to what we imagined college athletics to be.

And it seems to be that we are moving towards that even faster.

As you know, and you referenced it earlier, this summer, the NCAA, its five power conferences and lawyers that are representing a class of Division I athletes, filed the detailed terms of an antitrust lawsuit that settled three lawsuits against the NCAA.

That lawsuit, that settlement, is going to fundamentally change or potentially change how we understand college sports.

I want you to prognosticate with me, in what ways will this agreement have the potential to reshape the business of college sports?

And what do you see,

particularly given the fact that the NCAA has agreed to pay $2.78 billion in damages to past athletes?

What do we think happens because of this forced function in the sports?

Well, if the settlement is instituted, I do think that it will level the playing field for some of the top schools.

So, or excuse me, so NIL was allowed, and then it became kind of a wild west where

you could raise as much money as you could, and you could spend as much money as you could.

And the teams that were best at raising money could get the best players.

Now, this seems like it's going to institute something similar to a salary cap, and that'll change the dynamics.

And

it will probably make it more difficult for players to transfer, which has also been something that's been really frustrating for schools and, frankly, for fans, because they get a player in and then they lose him because he has power and leverage to go elsewhere.

I think it's really hard to predict how it's going to impact the whole institution of college sports because college sports is in such flux.

Like you mentioned, and we all use the word Power Five conferences.

It's still something that we all say, but I'm not sure that it's even true anymore because one of those conferences that we consider Power Five lost all but two of their teams last year.

The Pac-10, which at one point is Pac-12, is now the Pac-2.

And so

there are teams running around from conference to conference to be able to get access to more and more of the TV money, which is really what's driving them, which is why

conferences that have regional titles end up having teams that are no longer in that region because it's about getting access to new TV markets.

The team that I, the school I went to, University of Maryland, I think it was in 2010, joined the Big Ten and was in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

We don't play any of the teams that I played when I was there.

And the reason why we joined the Big Ten was not because Maryland's some big football power.

It's because Big Ten wanted access to the mid-Atlantic TV market.

And that is how professional sports organizations operate.

So it's not the.

It's really hard for me to know what the future is going to look like when I have no idea even where the teams are going to be or what conference they're going to be, what conference they're going to belong to.

So I'm sorry, I let you down.

You did not let me down, but I'm going to give you one more shot at it.

Okay.

Okay.

So you can't tell the future, but you can give advice.

You have been an eloquent and stalwart champion for labor, for people who need support, for people who need their voices heard.

And for those listening to this podcast and others who are watching all of this unfold, as you said, you know, this is not going to be linear.

We don't know what's coming, but we do know what's happening right now.

We've got student athletes who are in flux and they have questions.

They don't always have answers.

And sometimes they don't even know which questions to ask.

I'm a tax attorney.

And when you raise the issue of taxing their scholarships, like there are real questions that are out there for those who are paying attention and want to do something for the students that are athletes now and for the professionals that they may or may not become, what should we be doing to support them?

I think the most important thing is the thing we talked about earlier is to support the sports, support all the sports.

I think

the more that we can give

power to the athletes by showing that we care and we appreciate what they're doing, that's the more power that they have.

The system is going to change.

And when we look up in

the powers that be recognized, that we're showing up because we want to see our daughters play basketball, because we want to see our daughters play softball, because we want to see our sons play lacrosse or tennis or basketball or football.

That's why we're here.

They're the people that we care about.

Those are the people who have the power.

We're not showing up to see.

athletic directors play chess against school presidents.

You guys aren't important.

We aren't showing up to see the logos on the side of the helmets.

We're showing up because these talented young people are willing to put their bodies on the line in order to entertain us and we enjoy and appreciate it.

I think that is the easiest thing to do.

Show up and watch it, support it, talk about it, give them power and recognize that they are human.

I think that happens often in our entertainment, especially when it's physical labor is you forget and it's easy for us to forget.

that these are people under those helmets.

It's not just our result and they are kids in many cases or young adults.

And when things go poorly, it's easy for us to say not nice things about the players who we blame for that situation.

But understand that these are people that are doing the best that they can in the same way that you are in the job that you may have.

Dominique Foxworth, you are redeemed.

That was the perfect answer, and I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for joining us here at Assembly Required.

Thank you so much.

Next, we'll chat with Chicago Sky Forward and Women's National Basketball Players Association Vice President, Breonna Turner.

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class.

They're reviewing the American Revolution.

The British were initiating force and the Americans were retaliating.

Okay.

Where did they initiate force?

It started in their taxation without representation.

Why is that wrong?

The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights and by encroaching on individual rights they cannot protect them.

Welcome to eighth grade at Challenger School.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.

Brianna Turner, welcome to Assembly Required.

Thank you for having me.

Well, I am excited to have this conversation with you.

I had a chance to get to know you through my work with the Women's National Basketball Players Association, WNBPA.

It has been a delight to work with you.

But before we dive into that conversation, I'd love to have you tell us about where you started, because a lot of what we learn about ourselves starts at the beginning.

So let's go back to your college career.

What was your path to becoming a college ball player?

I'm an only child and both my parents played basketball in college.

So I think it was in my genetics to follow the same path.

And being from Texas, obviously Texas is so grand and large, but I wanted to be a slide away.

So I found myself in Southpen, Indiana at the University of Notre Dame.

So you went to Notre Dame and did you immediately start playing?

Were there any doubts about you becoming a basketball player in college?

Oh no, I played from my freshman year.

I was really lucky enough to play my rookie year.

So yeah, I was able to play my freshman year.

We went to three Final Fours, won a national championship.

So I really enjoyed my time at Notre Dame.

So you never thought about ditching it all and going to lacrosse?

I did not consider that.

You know, I I don't even know about lacrosse, so I moved up to the Midwest, but now I stuck with basketball.

Well, one of the reasons I wanted to have you join this conversation is that you are not much older than a lot of the young women who are playing ball today.

And yet there is a new reality known as NIL, name, image, likeness.

And there have been recent decisions about how young players who are still in college get to make choices about their lives and particularly about money.

More than that, there are recent decisions about revenue sharing between schools and players, and that's been described as the end of the NCAA's amateurism model.

This is something that dates back to 1906.

I want you to think about yourself as that young player who is firmly committed to basketball, no lacrosse for you.

But how would the fact that you could make as much money, if not more than your coach, have affected your training as a basketball player?

I think it could have affected it tremendously.

The majority of college kids do not go pro.

So you're trying to maximize your four or five years in college to make the most out of it, to set yourself up for post-graduation.

So I think NIL definitely makes you have a second thought or think about what is this school offering?

What is this school offering?

What does this NIL collective have?

So it makes a lot more.

hard decisions going into that college process.

Do you think it would have changed the dynamic between you and your coach?

Yes and no.

I've played under Muffa McGraw in Notre Dame and she influenced me heavily.

But I think that with her, she would really have like a system in place or a staff member in place to help us navigate that from everything from the taxes to making sure we're having good deals to how the agents work.

I think that she really helped guide us as student athletes during the process.

So I want you to think a little bit ahead now.

As you pointed out, this is brand new.

NIL didn't exist when you were in in school.

Can you think a little bit about the evolution this will have on sports, especially for women who already face very unique challenges in the arena?

I see it going both ways before women athletes weren't getting the same amount of coverage as male athletes.

But I think with NIL, these companies are tapping into the power of women and just the social media and women and seeing that we can invest in women, we can showcase women.

So I definitely see it both ways that I'm seeing more women being partnered with these various brands from insurance companies to clothing brands.

So I think it is cool to see an area that when I've been in school, it would have really been reserved for male athletes, seeing female athletes getting some of the same publicity.

So you attended Notre Dame, which a few people may have heard of.

There's a very real concern about whether NIL will crowd out smaller schools.

that are in pursuit of talent.

Basically, one of the dangers is that colleges can essentially buy access to the best players.

The worry then is that it phases out schools that don't have deep pockets or strong boosters and that it makes what is already a competitive playing field even more uneven.

Do you think this is a legitimate worry?

I 100% think it's legitimate.

Even looking out at this college landscape, you see all the conferences are changing now.

We have kids literally playing across the country.

So I definitely think it does phase out some of their smaller schools that don't have the capacity to pay these athletes or promise them cars and apartments and all these other luxuries.

So, I think it definitely does create a huge imbalance amongst the different schools.

Why should we care?

We should care because if you think about like how the NCAA was founded on student athletes, on students pursuing education and also trying to excel the best they can at their sport in those four years, and we should care because are we watching student athletes?

Are we watching amateurs?

Are we pushing the pros in college?

I think it's definitely teetering that line of amateurization versus the professional aspects of college athletics.

So you have the opportunity to be for one hour or for the next 37 seconds.

You are the advisor to all people.

What do you want them to have top of mind when they're making decisions about NIL and how we think about college sports?

That is honestly so hard because like I said, like you said, it is so new.

But I think for student athletes, you have to have keeping the main thing.

And yeah, people can promise you X, Y, Z, but you have to also think about who you're going to be around,

what happens if your coach leaves, what happens if your school exchanges conferences.

Of course, yes, you're chasing the money, but you also have to realize you got to think about yourself and the relationships you build.

And what are you even pursuing your college degree in?

Because if you're 18, you got all this money.

It might be nice to go out and buy designer this and designer that.

But you have to think about adult things like, okay, how do I pay my rent?

What do my taxes look like?

What does this money look like?

Can I invest it?

So I think it just, it's going to take a huge learning curve and a lot of minds coming together to solve it.

You did pretty good for having 37 seconds to fix everything.

Look, one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation, this show is about how we solve big problems, but also how we approach the pieces of those problems so we understand it.

And embedded in the conversation of NIL is a conversation about labor.

There's a conversation about gender parity.

NIL is a proxy for, as you pointed out, amateurism versus professionalism.

And how old are you when you're asked to start making life-changing decisions?

And do you have the supports you need?

If we fast forward from your time at Notre Dame to now, you are a WNBA player, but you are also a vice president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association.

And as I said earlier, I've had the honor to serve on the WNBPA's advisory board for the past several years.

For those not as steeped in these conversations, can you describe what the WNBPA does and what inspired you to bid for leadership?

Yes, so we are the labor union, player support, to what that looks like.

benefits for working mothers that are also players, housing benefits, salary benefits.

So kind of like all the behind the scenes stuff for our contracts to run smoothly.

As I said, today's episode is focusing on how NIL is part of this national dialogue about economic access, about gender parity, about labor rights.

And you've been on the front lines of this.

And as you just mentioned, it's all the behind the scenes.

It's the fine print.

Viewers get to see the games, but your job is to help think about the women who are doing this work.

Can you talk a little bit about the lessons that the union learned from the 2020 negotiations that secured a seven-year contract that was unlike anything that WNBA had seen before.

I think we saw that people are watching, that we are, we have value as a product, and that people want to see the WNBA.

And so we have rights, and we can fight more for what we want as players because the product is there, the support is there, the fans are there.

So we kind of have like a chip on our shoulders that, hey, like, this is something that's value.

This is something that people want to see.

So, like, we can fight for things we also want behind the scenes as well.

Part of the NIL experience are NIL collectives.

And those collectives basically allow the aggregation of monies and deals and opportunities.

And so you have NIL collectives that are usually at those schools.

And then you have endorsement deals that come individually, usually to players.

And they're both emerging in the past few years very quickly and without a lot of structure.

And unfortunately, from my vantage point, it seems to me that these these collectives and these deals are replicating some of the past disparities that you have fought so hard to address.

Think about your experiences, both in college and what you're fighting for now.

What additional tools should female college athletes seek out, given how differently men and women athletes are approached for sponsorship opportunities?

Definitely just like advisory, even looking at professional leagues now.

The WNBA, NWSL just came out out with their new CBA.

So it's looking at how professional women's leagues go about these things.

And obviously, the WNBA is affiliated with the NBA, but we also have separate CBA negotiations from the NBA players.

So I think it is a lot to look at from a marketing perspective or from a player perspective.

But at the end of the day, like women athletes, we do not have the same opportunities, income levels, and across the board as male athletes.

So it definitely is taking a deeper look at those things and seeing like, where do women athletes fit in?

A lot of these things are made with the male athletes as the base as like the end-all be-all so it's kind of also just like carving out that space for women athletes to see how we fit in along with the product as well well i i appreciate that and i want to dig a little deeper in part because much like politics sports is very well known for initials

And so you used two of them that I think are really important in this conversation.

You mentioned the acronym for women's soccer, but you also used CBA, which are collective bargaining agreements.

Can you talk a little bit more about what's happened recently for soccer and why CBAs are so important?

Yeah, so the NWLSL just signed their monumental CBA and obviously collective bargaining agreement, which talks about players' rights.

And like I said, just like WNBA from housing to how players that are mothers are treated to your income levels to even your pre diem on the road, if you get $86 or $83, like all those little things add up.

So it's just like the little little minute details behind the scenes of what goes on during the season and standards.

Like these have to happen.

Like these are negotiated.

These are agreed upon, signed upon, signed upon between the league and the players.

So these are things you have to get that are absolutely necessary.

One of the reasons this conversation is so important and I wanted to talk to you is that you recently got your master's degree in social justice.

And part of what you've been fighting for through the CBAs and through the conversations you're having deals with the very real issues of housing, of how women who are new mothers are treated, about disparities.

Can you talk a little bit about what led you to go after that master's degree and how you see it playing a role in the work that you're doing for your teammates?

Yeah, I've always been interested in social justice, human rights, and I saw everything just going on in this country and this world.

I wanted to have like a deeper understanding.

Obviously, you see a lot on social media, but obviously I don't want to get my like facts from social media.

So I wanted to go back to school to, again, get a deeper understanding.

And I'm so happy that I did.

I just felt like my perspective has shifted tremendously and just like how I absorb information has also shifted tremendously.

So I'm very thankful for the opportunity that I had.

And it came through the Players Association, the WMPBA, because they also have scholarship opportunities within our CBA that they can provide extra access for schooling and education.

So I obviously took advantage of that.

And I was able to complete my master's degree.

What's the topic that you focused on in your master's degree?

I have to do with sports, actually.

So, just the like we talked about before, like the disparity in sports and how women athletes are treated versus male athletes, whether they're professional, Olympics, just like all over the world, the disparity between female and male athletes from facilities to income to all across the board.

And what was your prescription?

Women athletes deserve more.

Well, given that that's the that's the goal, what do you see as a potential role for the WNBA or for women's soccer to intervene or to support female college athletes, given that they're in this transition because of NIL?

What could that look like?

Imagine with me.

Maybe just a supporting hand, supporting guidance.

Obviously, a lot of us in the professional leagues now did not have NIL.

But through our work with like CBAs and obviously having agents and stuff, I think we can provide some tips and tricks to kids in college now that are trying to pursue and figure these different things out.

Well, as part of that, one of your current roles is integrating younger WNBA stars into the players union.

There's been a lot of conversation about recent arrivals to the WNBA.

And there has been a lot of new interest and excitement about watching women basketball players just do their thing.

Is there an opportunity that you see in this moment that didn't exist two years ago, three years ago?

And how do you think you personally should take a role in this?

I absolutely think it's changed from a few years ago.

I think it honestly changes year to year.

And honestly, at this point, NIL, month to month.

But with having younger players that are obviously stars in themselves and future stars of this league, I think it's never too early to get involved just to see the workarounds.

Even this fall, we have the option to opt out of our current CBA.

But as a league, everyone has a vote.

I have the same vote as our rookies.

As a rookie cost league, everyone gets one vote, and we can all, we're in it together or out of it together.

So it involves not just teamwork within your own teams, but really teamwork across the league, because as players, we unite as one team as we look at this, the future of our CBA.

So, how do you think about this issue, given your interest in social justice, the manifestation of what happens to players who are in sports without professional associations, who don't have Breonna Turner at the WNBPA speaking up, who don't necessarily know what their rights are.

They don't even know what to ask for.

What do you think the work should be done should look like for those players?

I think maybe just going to like your own school's collective and talking to your school and seeing what their details are.

Personally, I think I'm pretty sure Notre Dame has an NIL collective.

I'm not sure, obviously, the details and workarounds, but I know a lot of schools have a certain area or group they can go to be like hey i have this deal from the local auto dealership in south bend and they're saying they can do this for me but i don't really know so i definitely just go into like the nil collectives and um asking your schools to see what those deals look like because again if you're not like obviously i know the disparity is also real not even across the different leagues but different teams not every single player is getting these multi-million dollar ten thousand dollar deals like it's not consistent even across different teams so i think just definitely going to their nil collectives at their school and asking for advice and guidance would definitely be helpful.

So you and I first met during the 2020 election cycle.

And recently we met again when the WNBA announced a new voting rights initiative.

Can you talk a little bit about the new initiative and about how you see this current political moment?

Yeah, so the WMBPA has partnered with Rock the Vote, which allows Americans to check their voter registration status, check the local polling spots, even even register to vote.

So I think it's just a great way.

Obviously, our summer leads into the fall, which is election time.

So we want all of our fans to stay up to date and making sure they're registered to vote and knowing their voting rights, their polling places, because we don't want to get to election day and people are confused about where to go.

So we know we can use this time to spread the word to all the fans that come across this summer.

Awesome.

So I'm going to wrap up with two quick questions for you.

So the first one is: this is a show about connecting the dots, about taking things that seem disparate and distant from each other and pulling them together.

You do that through not only your work as a leader in the league, but you do that in your personal life, in your public life.

What are some issues that you see that are often disconnected from sports, but you think are critical public policy conversations?

You've got a few politicians and a lot of voters who are listening.

What should they be connecting the dots around?

I think body autonomy and reproductive rights, that's a big one that the Player Association is fighting for now.

If people don't know the WNBA, we play in four different cities and four different states across the country.

And we know that our rights change depending upon which state we play in.

So we're all about teamwork and consistency.

So we want to have a consistent rights for our body across the country, regardless of what state we're playing in.

So we're really pushing for obviously body autonomy as a league of women.

We know that we want control of our own bodies and what goes on with that.

So that's something that we're really big, we're advocating for right now.

Well, you know, I stand with you on that.

And the last question I have for you is you have been a part of so many important conversations when you were a student at Notre Dame, your time as a player, your work in labor issues, your work just in social justice.

You came through the WNBA bubble when so much was happening in our world.

And for as many things as we saw change, so much either didn't change or regressed.

And so one thing that I think is clear to so many is the fact that progress has not always been linear.

Why is it important to remember this?

And how do you think about

this

uneven evolution as we frame what we do to make things better?

I actually heard this in Audrey a few years ago, but I think of it as planting a tree.

So right now we're planting the seeds, we're planting the roots, and we might not see it grow right now or in the next five years, 10 years, but the hope is that in 30 years, the next generation, the next few generations can benefit from the seeds we're planting now.

So obviously I might not see the benefits.

I might not get the NIL money or this, that, the other.

But I want to see women sports thrive throughout my whole entire lifetime, not just the time that I'm in it now.

So my hope is that as as I plant these seeds now,

WBA players in three decades will see the tree in full bloom and be able to pick the fruit off and just enjoy the literal fruits of our labors today.

So it's really just for the future players and the future women of the league.

And that profound statement comes from our own Brianna Turner of the Chicago Sky, vice president of the WNPBA, and one of my favorite players.

Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.

Thank you for having me today.

Brianna, you are magic.

Each week, we want to charge ourselves to do something, find an opportunity to make a difference and a way to get involved or just to get started working on a solution in a segment that we like to call our toolkit.

At Assembly Required, we try to encourage the audience to be curious, do good, and solve problems.

If you're curious, I'd invite you to check out the documentary Women of Troy, which chronicles the 1980s USC women's basketball team that shook up the NCAA and influenced the formation of the WNBA.

Having Cheryl Miller on our team was a new frontier for women's basketball.

She's faster than all your guards and she plays at the rim.

That's the next evolution of college women's basketball.

Iron sharpens iron and that's what we really did for each other.

Cheryl Miller, Cynthia Cooper, the McGee twins, that's a Hall of Fame lineup right there.

Next up, do good.

One of the main barriers to equal pay is that men's sports have higher sponsorships and sell more tickets.

Buy a season pass to stream the WNBA, buy tickets to your women's soccer team, watch women's sports, and put some money on the table.

Finally, solve problems.

Reach out to your alma mater or your alumni association and ask about how they are approaching NIL collectives.

Big decisions often happen in the dark, but how we treat young people at the start of their careers will affect us all.

So reach out and ask questions.

That's all from us today at Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

Talk to you next week.

Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Steven Roberts, and our associate producer is Paulina Velasco.

Kira Polaviev is our video producer.

Our theme song is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroat, Kyle Seglund, Tyler Boozer, and Samantha Slossberg for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long, Madeline Haringer, and me, Stacey Abrams.

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