--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basketball's back. LeBron James lost his first game of the season to Toronto's adopted son Kawhi Leonard, but it doesn't matter. He's still making something like $92 million this season. Some of that money is his salary from the LA Lakers, but most of it is for his likeness. His image and ads in video games, the dream of Space Jam 2 that he's making a reality.
--:-- [Discussion of LeBron James' salary]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're the monsters! That dream is why LeBron James skipped playing college ball and went straight to the NBA. And he talked about that decision on his HBO series The Shop recently.
--:-- [Clip from The Shop]
--:-- LeBron James: Part of the reason why I went to the NBA is to get my mom out of the situation that she was in. I couldn't have done that if I would have stepped on a college campus. I mean, here's the fame, but then there's no compensation. It's so crazy. People are like, oh, you must be so rich. and I'm like, you must not know the NCAA, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I graduated in 2004. I mean, we're talking about 10 years later and they're still making money off of us.
--:-- [Clip from The Shop]
--:-- LeBron James: The shop is normally a conversation between athletes, musicians, and actors, but in this episode, a different kind of guest showed up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: California Governor Gavin Newsom. Billions and billions of dollars goes to these universities, goes to these colleges, billion-plus revenue to the NCAA, and the actual product, the folks that are putting everything on the line, are getting nothing.
--:-- [Clip from The Shop]
--:-- Gavin Newsom: When you put pen to paper right now, what's this gonna change and what's it gonna do? It's going to change college sports for the better by having now the interest, finally, of the athletes on par with the interest of the institutions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Newsom sat next to LeBron and signed the Fair Pay-to-Play Act into law. And when it goes into effect in 2023, California's college athletes will be able to do a whole bunch of things they never could before.
--:-- Matt Brown: California Senate Bill 206 allows for student athletes in California, all of the NCAA member institutions from major schools in the Pac-12, like your Stanford's or UCLA's, to much smaller schools, your Fresno State's or your Pacific's. It allows students to be able to monetize their likeness without penalty from the school or the NCAA.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So theoretically, now with this law has been passed, if you're a basketball player at Pacific and a car dealership in Stockton wants to use your image in a car dealership ad, the NCAA can't stop you.
--:-- Matt Brown: And NCAA current bylaws say you can't do that or you'll lose your amateurism status. So there's going to be a conflict now between California state law and NCAA bylaws.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is California in a league of its own here?
--:-- Matt Brown: It was until after the bill was passed. And then we've already seen a pretty substantial copycat effect across the country. We have New York and Florida, South Carolina, Illinois, all over the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of lawmakers are looking at passing similar laws in part because they don't want their students to be at a recruiting disadvantage. and I think in part because if California's done it, that that shows that there's an appetite for passing this similar kind of law.
--:-- Matt Brown: So already within just a week or so, close to a third of the US population is covered by a state that's at least looking at passing similar legislation and more are likely to come.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How's the NCAA navigating this sort of wave of laws that are saying that we're gonna change how we compensate college athletes across the country?
--:-- Matt Brown: Not well. If you ask a senior NCAA administrator or maybe an athletic director or a university president that's been there for a long time, a lot of them are treating this law like the opening of the seventh seal of the apocalypse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The NCAA has sent a letter to the governor of California. In the letter, the NCAA calls the Fair Pay to Play Act harmful and unconstitutional, adding that it would quote upend the balance of national competition in college sports
--:-- Matt Brown: And the head of the NCAA is saying there no meaningful distinction between a third party paying a player and a university paying a player And then you're just going to have regular free agency and it's going to be this commercialism run amok kind of thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And schools really don't want that because this current system gives them a lot of power to control the money that comes in and it requires donors who are interested in really good athletes going to their alma maters to give the money to the school rather than to the players directly, which could theoretically happen if likeness rights become liberalized all over the country.
--:-- Matt Brown: But like for the time being, you've got this conflict between the California law and the NCAA rules and other states, I imagine, have similar conflicts. How are they going to deal with that in just the short term?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, that's going to be the interesting question here, because the NCAA, the message has been pretty universal. They don't want to have 50 different states with 50 different regulations.
--:-- Matt Brown: So what we're going to have is either a federal law that supersedes all these state laws, and we have two different Republicans right now who are in the process of advancing legislation to do just that, or the NCAA would try to strike up some sort of compromise with either California or other lawmakers to have some kind of national policy, one that would probably be a more limited likeness rights marketplace than what California is proposing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So is California sort of trying to take the same strategy with college athlete compensation as it did with, say, you know, emissions standards by trying to sort of lead the pack and say, here's a different set of rules. And now the federal government will have to catch up.
--:-- Matt Brown: Yeah, I think that's a really great way of putting it. California is so big. It has some of the largest athletic brands. It produces more high level basketball and football players than almost anywhere else in the country. it has the clout and the scale to be able to do something like this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, if the first state to propose this sort of legislation was Delaware, with just two, you know, relatively low importance athletic programs. Sorry, Joe Biden. Congratulations, man. You beat the Tar Heels. That's a hell of a congratulations.
--:-- Matt Brown: I really mean it. It really is really cool. So, you know, if the first state was Delaware, the NCAA might have been able to muscle them out. But you can't really do that to UCLA and USC and Stanford and Cal and a slew of other high-performing mid-majors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if California has been holding this card for a while, why is it playing it now?
--:-- Matt Brown: I think we're seeing a more politically activated group of student-athletes, you know, people who are more aware of this enormous gap between the amount of money that these athletic departments are making. You're starving, but they're making billions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You got your jersey on. If you want to take your jersey and sell it to somebody, you can get in trouble for that. And it has your name on it and your sweat. It's crazy to me.
--:-- Matt Brown: What athletes are doing is work. It's tremendous work. But it is work. And I don't know if you understand it until you go through it. Like waking up at 6 a.m., going to weights. Then going from there, basically minimal meals, going to class. Then from class to practice. Practice four to five hours a day. And then after that, you have homework and more class. And then go to sleep and then rinse, repeat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, I can tell you from experience, I had negative 40 bucks in my account. Usually my account was in a negative more times than it was in a positive. You got to make decisions on whether you get gas for your car or whether you get the meal for the day.
--:-- Matt Brown: You know what? You got one of the two choices. I mean, we have Michigan and Ohio State and Texas near the top here, bringing in over $200 million a year for their athletic departments and an enormous time burden and risk for a football player.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, you might only have a few years to be able to earn a living. your coach is making $6 million, your strength coach might be making a half million dollars, there are seven other assistants who are making a half million dollars, and you can't go to Chick-fil-A.
--:-- Matt Brown: I think that that gap has become so powerful that now there's even more movement to try and rectify that in some way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So how are college athletes feeling right now seeing all this change all at once?
--:-- Matt Brown: As you would expect, there's some real excitement, I think, from people who are currently playing college football or basketball. A lot of these kids understand that they're probably not going to be able to cut a six-figure sneaker deal or car dealership ad while they're in school, especially if they're at a smaller program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But almost everybody has some level of likeness rights. Even if it's relatively small, if you're a college softball player, somebody would probably pay you to go to a softball camp and teach high school kids how to play softball.
--:-- Matt Brown: The fact that you are structurally required to kind of live in poverty is unfair And the idea that there might be a legislative remedy to that excites a lot of kids even if they realize it might not come right away
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Matt Brown is the author of What If? A Closer Look at College Football's Great Questions.
--:-- [Clip from Today Explained]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We spoke about paying college athletes, but these athletes want to get paid once they're done playing, too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. That's in a minute on Today Explained.
--:-- [Automatic voice message system]
--:-- John Delore: Is not available.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. John Delore. Is not available. At the tone, please record your message.
--:-- [Automatic voice message system continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: John Delore, Sean Rameswaram for him. I know that you are the executive producer of the Paris Review podcast.
--:-- [Clip from Paris Review podcast]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know that this is your baby. And in the middle of our show today, we are meant to promote the Paris Review podcast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I was just calling you to figure out what exactly you wanted me to tell the people about your show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is it just a bunch of people telling you how Paris is? Is it a critical assessment of Paris? Or is it more like an acclaimed podcast from the legendary literary journal, The Paris Review, that is coming back for its second season, a brand new audio odyssey in which each episode blends intimate performances of Paris Review fiction, poetry, and also interviews with archival recordings and reenactments to create this totally immersive listening experience.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know if this season will feature Jason Alexander reading Philip Roth or Molly Ringwald reading rising fiction star Mary Terrier or Jenny Slate channeling Anne Sexton or archival audio from Toni Morrison and many other exciting literary voices.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I certainly hope that it does.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I really hope that you can listen to season two of The Paris Review right now in Stitcher, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I bet you can.
--:-- [Automatic voice message system continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The debate over paying college athletes in America has been around almost as long as college athletics in America, but the fight to change the pay grade has really ramped up in the past 30 years or so.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: I had moved on and they were still making money off of my likeness.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ed O'Bannon was the star of the 1995 UCLA basketball team and he was named most outstanding player in the Final Four that year.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: But years after leaving UCLA, he lost his likeness.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was at a friend's house. It was a normal day, regular day. You know, I remember being out in the front yard playing catch with one of his sons.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: And then, you know, in conversation, he says, hey, we were playing, you know, this video game last night, man, and you were on it. You know, you want to check it out?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When was this? When did this happen?
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: This was in 08.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you played college basketball in the mid-90s, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then in 2008, you're hanging out at a friend's house and he's like, hey, I just played a video game that you were on. What?
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: What was your reaction?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's crazy, man. I was excited. You know, I wanted to see it. I mean, I grew up in the age where video games were just coming out.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: You know, my best friend down the street had Atari. My brother and I had Intellivision. We always played Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, to be on a video game was a dream come true.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: So did you go in and sit down and play?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I didn't play. I did sit down and had an adult beverage. And we just sat there and watched this kid play this video game
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: Yeah we underway What the drink you drink when you sitting down to watch some kid play you on a video game Jack and Coke.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Good to know. If that ever happens to me, they all know what to pour.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: Get out of the way, baby. That was absolutely sensational.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What did you look like in the game?
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: You were like, oh, my God, it's a mirror image.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Was it kind of glitchy graphics or what?
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: I was like, wow, you know, that's me. You know, he's bald-headed. He's left-handed. You know, long arms, skinny arms, and he can shoot too?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, that's me. And you were happy about it?
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I was thrilled. I thought it was really cool.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then my friend kind of leans over, you know, kind of nudges me with his elbow and says, you know how much we pay for this? 60 bucks.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: You know how much you got?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And before I could answer, he was like, zero.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: When he said it, I thought it was funny. but in the midst of that laughter uh it kind of stopped you know and i thought about it and i was like damn i didn't get anything hell they didn't even call me you know to ask me you know my mind was racing i just couldn't i couldn't believe it i was just like here i am in my mid-30s and they're still making money off of my you know off of my face so you know off of me
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did you have another Jack and Coke?
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: I needed one, that's for sure. I didn't get another one, but I probably should have.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what happens next?
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: A couple weeks later, I get a phone call from a close friend of mine and mentor, Sonny Vaccaro. And he says, I'm looking to sue the NCAA for the mistreatment of college athletes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I says, wow, Mr. Vaccaro, a couple weeks ago, I was at a friend's house and I told him that story. And he was like, oh, my goodness.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: He said, you'd be perfect to be the lead plaintiff in all of this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It just so happens your mentor is thinking about suing the NCAA and you're there waiting for the perfect lawsuit.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: Yeah, that was exactly how it was.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why were they so excited? Why did they so desperately want to sue the NCAA?
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: Because they recognize this social injustice. That sounds bigger. It is bigger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are civil rights that are being violated here. How so?
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: What have you been prevented from doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I did not work. Being on scholarship, it's against NCAA rules.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: But honestly, I'm not sure that I had enough time to work. When it came to practice and workouts and classes, there would be no time to sleep.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was fun. It was a blast. But at the same time, it wasn't all roses. A lot of times your classmates would say, oh, I'm hungry. Everything's closed. I have no money.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: So, you know, you sit around and eat Doritos and fall asleep.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I would notice that there'd be 10,000 people every night, you know, at our basketball game.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: But, you know, when I would get home, there would be nothing to eat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I noticed those things, but it's the system. That's just the way that it is.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: I didn't necessarily comprehend the amount of money. I didn't comprehend even that I was playing for free.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was a pride in the school and wearing the jersey thing.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: I was young, and all I wanted to do was play basketball for UCLA. way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That lawsuit that Ed was a part of after he saw himself in a video game years after he wore the jersey, ultimately he was part of a $60 million settlement.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: Because thousands of players got paid, Ed got $15,000.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a lot less money than he might have gotten if he'd been in control of his likeness all along, so as he recently told CNN, Ed is all about California's fair pay-to-play act.
--:-- Ed O'Bannon: California's in a really good position. They are changing the game, and from where we sit, we're extremely excited about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained. Thank you.
