Rethinking College Athletics

When Victoria Jackson, a sports historian at Arizona State University, and Matt Brown, who writes a newsletter called Extra Points about all the off the field issues that shape college sports, joined us earlier this season on Future you to talk about the stunning news about the continued realignment of the athletic conferences and and the impact on student athletes. Jeff, I think we issued fair warning that it was worth holding onto your seatbelts because there would be a part two.

Indeed we did, Michael. And part two of that conversation has arrived in which we take a deep dive with Victoria Mac on name, image and likeness. Payne, student athletes, agents and more on this episode of Future youe.

This episode is brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, working to eliminate race, ethnicity and income as predictors of student success through innovation, data and information policy, and institutional transformation, and by Course Hero. From creating more engaging syllabi to building a more inclusive and impactful curriculum, Course Hero is a professional learning community where more than 100,000 teachers share resources and strategies for helping students succeed. Get access to the latest teaching events, workshops and certification courses by joining CourseHero's professional learning community. Join today@coursehero.com educators. Subscribe to Future you wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on Twitter at the Handle FutureYou podcast. And if you enjoy the show, please give us a 5 star rating so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

I'm Michael Horn.

And I'm Jeff Salingo. So, Michael, let's just jump right back into this conversation with Victoria and Matt.

If we've been really dealing in the structure, right, of the conferences and the NCAA and so forth, I want to start to move a little bit more toward some of the changes that impact students and how they feel it. And so, you know, look, the Big Ten conference expansion and the TV deal that comes on the heels, of course, of the NCAA adopting a uniform interim policy that in essence allows athletes the opportunity to benefit from their name, image and likeness, or what's known as nil. And Matt, I'm curious any sense of how that's going so far in these early days?

Yeah, it's a great question. I feel like I could write about NIL every day at extra points. I'd have something new to write about. So the way only way you could answer this, I think, is we have to first talk about what is nil. And I think even though a lot of different activities can fall under that umbrella right now, we really have two different markets. We have a market driven nil, where a brand or Perhaps a camp or somebody wanting private lessons will partner with an athlete because they want some kind of bonafide commercial benefit from that interaction. Like when Buffalo Wild Wings sponsors an offensive line group. They're not doing it because they really care very deeply about who plays at Michigan State. They're doing it because they're trying to buy earned media or buy access, you know, to their, their, their accounts. And I think, by and large, I would say this, that world has been a net positive. There's some, there's a lot of friction in this marketplace. It hasn't grown nearly as large as maybe some venture capital groups or activists thought it might last year. There's some mental health or more existential questions that, that maybe we could talk about for, for that world. But I would argue, and I think a lot of other close observers would, that that system is better than what we had before, particularly for women athletes who don't, by and large don't have the opportunity to million in salary after graduation and maybe enjoying the peak of their potential popularity, which is not always true for football, men's basketball. We also have a completely different nil group, and I colloquially refer to this as bagman nil. You're seeing this with the rise of a lot of third party collective groups and occasionally through some local businesses where you are essentially laundering money through sometimes a charity, sometimes a local business, sometimes a donor group to give somebody basically a shadow salary. So they'll either stay at a particular institution or enroll somewhere else. And this has been happening since 1902. I mean, Yale and Princeton and Harvard did this when we were wearing leather helmets and nobody played football outside of New England. And you know, we could find people in the newspaper archives that freaked out about it too. So like, that isn't new. The idea of that, of there now being, I think, institutional caliber fundraising around these endeavors, that's new. And there's some, some significant gaps in the infrastructure support athletes. And actually, while I'm excited to see people get that they deserve because they're driving value, I have a lot of concerns that the bagman market is creating a different kind of exploitation by different people, especially I would say by agents. Because if you are an agent that represents an athlete in the NFL or the NBA, you have to be certified by that, by that union. And generally that benchmark is pretty strict. You typically have to have a law degree, you typically have to have years of negotiating experience. And it's in the union's best interest to say we don't want any Yahoo off the street to come in here and rip any of our people off. But I say this not as a humorous exaggeration to prove a point, but to be completely literal. Right now there's Nothing stopping a 19 year old who's still an undergrad from saying I'm an agent now and representing their doormate. That literally happens right now. I've done some of these deals to promote my publication. I picked up the phone, thought I was talking to somebody my age and it's a 20 year old. Then you have to explain what is actually legally required to you to fill out these compliance forms. And because of that dichotomy, you're seeing athletes right now that are getting some really bad advice. Advice that's really meant to enrich the agent in the short term. Advice that may be pushing them to transfer schools or to pick schools that they don't really want to do or that aren't aligned with their academic or long term professional athletic earning potential or to potentially get in trouble with the irs. Like I would be shocked if we don't have some significant nil lawsuits over the next six months either with the IRS not being paid, with an athlete not being paid, or with a brand not getting their deliverable. And part of that is just because this system was created with absolutely no guardrails whatsoever.

So there are some fascinating topics around here around student success, student well being, frankly, economic and financial literacy, questions around these students and so forth. And I think we want to come back to the question of agents more in a moment. But, but I, you know, thinking about all these arrangements we've just talked about, they're still all third party compensation arrangements. They're not from the schools themselves. So Victoria, I'm curious where you come out on this. Do you think athletes ought to be getting a cut of this money from the Big Ten deal? I mean it seems like Ohio State's, excuse me, the Ohio State's quarterback, C.J. stroud. Yep, there we go. Thinks they should. Let's just give a quick listen to his answer to a reporter's question this summer.

It would definitely mean a lot, not only to the players, but to the coaches and the whole, I think even the school would appreciate just giving us maybe a little something, you know what I mean? Just because, I mean we put in so much work, like we're in here, nobody's looking and all the time that goes into it, it's definitely tough. But then you take time away from your family. Like I'm 2,000 watt, 2,000 miles away from home. I'M not, I don't want anybody so bad for me. But same time, I mean, it does take a lot of courage, it does take a lot of heart to be here for day in and day out, year and you're out. So I definitely think it should be shared. But if not, I mean, at the end, we have the nil space and we can do it that way. So, I mean, the new college road is definitely turned around and I'm, I'm here for it,

so. Victoria, is he right?

Well, you know, taking what CJ Stroud just said and alongside what Matt had just described to us, like the easier thing for schools to be doing rather than try to control that chaos and mess that Matt described, is to introduce pay for football players and employee status. Like, that's a lot easier than trying to wrangle in the wildness of what Matt described. And, and that alongside, like CJ Straub being correct. So what's great is speaking of these outside forces making sure schools do the right thing is that we have one of our next antitrust lawsuits making its way through the courts. This one in Judge Claudia Wilkins court again. So she's a familiar face in these college sports antitrust suits. And it has to do with NIL being sold in these meteorites deals. So that's precisely how we can get pay. Because what's the value in these massive billion dollar meteorites being sold? The value is athlete performances and those athletes deserve a cut of that deal. And if we're speaking about Power 5 football in particular, the acceleration of this money, and it's not a bubble that's going to be burst. The value of live sports is here to stay because we don't have appointment TV sitcoms anymore. Like, it's live sports that carries the big price tag. It's not going away. And from $2 billion a year to $4 billion a year, and it's increasing from there. Just among the conferences off of football. Absolutely. They deserve a cut of that. The other piece related to this is that professional sports around the world have collapsed the boundary between pro sports and education. Most professional sports leagues include education and their compensation packages. And so this like hard line, no pay hard line because it's education, it just doesn't cut from that perspective either.

So, Victoria, I'm kind of curious about that because, so you've mentioned football in particular, but if they get compensation, how might that work for athletes in every sport? Right there. There seems to be this myth, at least among parents that I talk to, of the quote, unquote sports scholarship. And you know, not even every Sport in Division 1 awards scholarships that cover the entire cost of every athlete's education. So when we talk about compensation, are we talking about compensation across the board here, do you think?

I think you set up a system so that, you know, if volleyball takes off like volleyball, athletes deserve a cut of that deal too. You build in media rights, revenue sharing for all sports as the foundation. And if it's being tapped into, it's being tapped into. If it isn't, it isn't. But there's certainly value for volleyball right now. Gymnastics also. So there are many women's sports. Softball, my goodness. And tidali college softball is like probably the best product in college sports at women's College World Series. So yeah, I mean, you set up a structure in which all sports have a potential to benefit as far as media rights, revenue sharing. But you know, at the end of the day, football is a sport apart. And this, what has allowed us to continue in this way for so long is pretending all sports are the same and all athletes are deserving of the same benefits. And you know, a cross country runner, track and field runner like me, what I'm participating in is very different from, you know, the football games that we watch on Saturdays. And that's okay. There's value in that too. What I'd really like to see among the Olympic sports is a two tier model. I want to see vertical integration with national governing bodies so that like my sport, USA Track and field is involved in the collegiate space and the hosting of championships at the elite kind of Olympic development level. And then a return to a scholastic sport model. What we saw in women's college sports before Title ix, ironically, when it was run out of women's PE where there's just more participation opportunities at a local scale, high school sports writ large. And that two tier model is going to return to the community and student serving value of college sports as well.

Then Matt, then there's the issue of who holds all the power and who's looking out for the athlete. Right. In professional sports, athletes have agents or certified, you know, I don't know, are these agents now working in the collegiate space or is this like the Wild West? And what does that mean for athletes?

A couple of them are and a few of the largest agencies have gotten involved in this world. And if you're somebody like C.J. stroud or Bryce Young or a truly Olympic elite, Olympic caliber gymnast, you will attract interest from an established, well regarded, well trained agency firm. But that's not the case for most athletes, and you're seeing a rush, I think, into this profession from undergraduates, from people that run other kind of marketing firms, from people that maybe we would colloquially refer to as street agents or runners or affiliated parties that have always been a part of college athletics. It is a significant problem, in my opinion, that there aren't great voices. That's entire operation is just to represent the interests of athletes. The NCAA in court and in practice has made it clear that's not coming from them. And athletes in their informal governance have comparatively very little voice. There's still pretty significant legal and operational and logistical challenges to organizing an athlete union. It would be much easier if their athletes could collectively bargain over their, their working conditions and their playing conditions with, with management like they do in other sports. But that would also be one of the youngest and most transient unions in the world, not just in the United States, but, but globally. And I think anybody that you would talk to on the labor side would say organizing unions is really, really hard. What we saw in the, in the, in the pre Covid era, with the fits and starts of athlete organizations, most of them just got completely steamrolled. So I am not optimistic that, that even with a court order is coming in the next six to nine months just because it's going to take longer than that to get everyone to sign a card. So then you're kind of left with, well, there's a couple of journalists that kind of do it and a couple of agents that kind of do it. And you might have one or two ADs or SWA out of the goodness of their heart, and maybe one or two university presidents. But when the rubber hits the road, there isn't a great centralized voice to say, all I care about is, is advocating for this group of athletes.

Obviously, you know, grad students have wrestled with this unionization push in some schools as well, but I, I want to follow up on a different piece there. Matt, I'm curious, what does this all do for the recruiting part of the equation? You mentioned the transfer piece earlier, but I'm thinking of nil. For instance, if, if I were running an athletic department, wouldn't I want to put people in a place that, you know, helps athletes make the most in that area? Because it could help my recruiting. Right. So I, I've seen some writing that suggests that at least some schools have started to embrace this direction, but I'm not sure how widespread or deep those operations are.

Yeah, What I can tell you is that everybody will say that they are in public because you will look terrible if you get in front of a microphone right now and say, boy, I don't know about this NIL stuff. We should go back to how it was in 1997. You'll get eviscerated by assistant coaches. But assistant coaches on the recruiting trail also lie about anything in any sport because that's, and that's, you know, that's just the facts of this business. What I have seen in practice though is that there is a difference between a school saying we care about nil, we want to give our athletes the resources to develop that part of themselves and to be successful and that happening in practice. And I'm sure you know, everyone here who's affiliated in higher education and knows professors and knows administrators is very well aware there's a difference between having content knowledge and being able to be an effective communicator. What I think a lot of middle aged folks, God bless them in the NIL world that have tried to get involved here have forgotten that a college athlete, regardless what the NCAA says, they're spending 30 hours a week minimum on their craft as an athlete. They're also going to class. They also probably want to play Call of Duty occasionally or maybe go on a date or do something that has nothing to do with athletics. Which means when they get hauled into a meeting to go talk about, here's a rep we brought in from Fidelity to talk about, you know, retirement planning and financial. Nobody is listening like, and I talk. I hear this from so many athletes about a lot of well intentioned educational programming is just not clicking. Even at gigantic big brand institutions like Arizona State or Michigan, North Carolina, the percentage of athletes that are doing anything with nil right now it's under 40% across mid majors institutions where I think people do have value, I would estimate the industry standard is probably under 10%. It's rare that I talk to somebody at a Samford or a Belmont or Southern Illinois, where it's more than that. I think people want to do the right thing, but they haven't figured out how to do it yet.

So let's just talk about the future and wrap up there. So Matt, what's next on the horizon? It seems that major intercollegiate athletics are becoming, as we've said along here, less distinguishable from professional sports. And in many ways, right. We have games on almost every night. Penn State, where I grew up going to football games, might start selling beer at the stadium. We haven't even talked about sports betting. So what's next?

Boy, it's a tough question. I mean, I would say very generally that you're right. The trend of the, of college athletics becoming more and more indistinguishable on the professional side is true. And that's, I would say that's, that's true. Not just at the Power 5 level, but you're going to see some of that at mid major places like Penn State is not going to be the, the, the only place that's going to be selling beer. That's a standard at mid major places all over the south, increasingly in the West. And you're going to see these schools try to license and put slap their logo on everything that they possibly can, including things that 20 years ago would have seemed horrific. I, I, I, you're also going to see more, more and more pressure from not just athletes themselves, but from outside groups and from within the faculty about better empowering and protecting athletes, not just financially, but protect them from abuse, protect them from forces that might rob their ability to pursue their academic dreams and major in what they want to and study what they want to be protected from injury. This has been a common push for reform. This is what a lot of the college athletics reform movement outside of NIL has really pushed for. And I imagine that's going to grow louder, especially since the NCAA's previously more bulletproof record in the courts is completely out the window. In a post Alston world, I would imagine there are plenty of district judges and attorneys looking for plaintiffs that would love to go take a whack at that pinata.

So as we wrap up here, Victoria, I'm curious that, you know, there's the famous NCAA commercial that always reminds us that most student athletes, quote, go pro in something other than sports. So wrap us up here by putting this all in some sort of perspective for our audience. Do we risk overplaying the significance of all this by focusing so much on the sports that Americans think about when you say college athletics, namely football and men's basketball, or, or is this the right conversation to be having?

Yeah. Athletes in Division 1 football and men's basketball represent 3.5% of the total number of college athletes. So that's what we've been talking about that dominates the conversation. Those athletes sell higher education to American families. College is not an education. College education is one part of what it means to go to college. But what schools are selling is a college experience and football represents that on big screens in homes around the country. Ian Bogust at Washington University in St. Louis wrote a really important piece in the Atlantic and he was trying to answer the question of why did all these families send their freshmen children to college in the fall of 2020? And that was his answer. That there's this idea of being entitled to a college experience and a full college experience in football. Is that. So these athletes do matter more than that. 3.5% is what I'm getting at. Because they're selling what it means to go to college beyond their campuses. They're selling higher education to Americans. So that's unbelievably important, I think, to keep in mind that the industry of higher education is dependent on college football as much as college sports. The industry of college sports, basketball, is going to sort itself out also. Adam Silver, I think, is doing that because it's a global sport. You know, the one one and done, that one year rule is going to go away soon. And there's already so many different alternative pathways to the NBA that men's college basketball is not going to be what it is right now, five years from now. So I think that's important too. But this idea that, you know, all these college athletes are going pro in something other than sport, they could do both. I did both. I went pro in sport and I went pro in school. I turned pro. And I mean, it was poor professional sport to be a professional track and field athlete. You are an independent contractor, right? So if you want to learn about nil, go to the poor professional sport of track and field to see all the mess of what that looks like. But, you know, we can do both. And I think introducing lifetime scholarships in a substantive way, getting better at building all of what we've been discussing around NIL education into academic programming for athletes, like getting more creative with what a college scholarship means and what academic credit looks like, slowing down timelines. I mean, the opportunity here is to rethink how to better serve athletes in the many different sports that they're participating in. And in large part, a defending of the status quo is what has prevented the reimagination of athlete education in many forms. So I think there are many people in higher education who understand this. What we need is an opportunity to empower them to get to work, to build it. And now is the best time to do that with everything in flux, I think.

Great.

Victoria, Matt, thank you so much for joining us today on Future youe.

It was my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Me too. Thank you so much.

And with that, from our conversation with Victoria and Matt, we'll take a short break and be right back on Future youe. This episode is being brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Today's college students are more than just students. They are workers, parents and caregivers and neighbors. And colleges and universities need to change to meet their changing needs. Learn more about the foundation's efforts to transform institutions to be more student centered@usprogram.gatesfoundation.org

welcome back to Future you, a lively conversation, Jeff, with a lot of angles we could explore. And I'll take us in a direction and we'll see where we end up. So, Jeff, look, you've been covering higher education for a few decades now. A lot of these arguments around should you or shouldn't you pay student athletes, they're, they're not necessarily new. But it does feel like the momentum is on the side of what Victoria said ought to happen, that students ought to get a cut of the money that the colleges are bringing in. I'm on the record as agreeing with her. I think it's time. And I'll also note that I think her argument that paying the student athletes directly as employees of the university is a far more preferable arrangement than the current nil craziness with the ugly agent dynamic that Matt talked about. Maybe emerging dynamic is a nicer way of saying that, less judgmental, but to me, it's yet one more very convincing argument that it's high time colleges change their relationship with student athletes. And as you know, we've both, I think, covered unionization efforts of grad students at different schools as reporters. This question of becoming employees and then having a union represent you, that's a piece of all this as well, where I'd love your take and maybe more than your take, your perspective, actually. So less your opinion, but like the vast number of presidents and admissions officers and others you have relationships with, do you have a sense of where they stand on these questions around paying student athletes and what their arguments are if they have a different view from what Victoria expressed?

Well, I'm not quite sure a lot of them have a strong view. If they do, they're probably against it. But I think overall, presidents are woefully unprepared for what's happening right now in college athletics. Michael, I recall this great story about a decade ago from a president in the Big Ten who was telling me they had this gathering of college presidents. They were talking about football, and the president of this other Big Ten university who was sitting next to him turns to him and says, what are we talking about? Is this football? They literally didn't even know the sport that they were talking about. I'm curious to know, to be honest with you, how many presidents were college athletes in their own day? And that doesn't mean you have to be a college athlete yourself to care about it as a president. But to be honest with you, at many of these big time universities, you know, ads are, you know, athletics directors are really running the shop and that's where the power is. And, and I think presidents in particular, given all the things that they're dealing with, tend to cede that power until something bad happens. You know, we saw that at Penn State, we saw that at Michigan State, we saw that at usc. We see that over and over again with something bad happening in athletics department. And the president is kind of just clueless about what's going on. I think in many ways, if college presidents had to spend a season in the life of an athlete, I think things might change. I'm still struck by something Victoria walked us through in the last episode where she talked about how so much of what's happening right now is built around football, but yet that might have the least impact here, right? When with time zones and travel and injuries and lack of sleep and mental health really impacting other sports beyond football, let's put a president in the life of those athletes for a season, by the way, maybe even a month. And trust me, I'm not quite sure they'll do it. They could do it. I'm not quite sure either of us could do it. After listening to that episode again recently, I got really angry in many ways that we're doing this to the athletes who are getting the least out of these deals. And then finally, I wonder also about the role that boards play. You know, boards really, I think, typically hesitate to act on athletics except when they're forced to. You know, we really haven't equipped them to be deliberate and act in many ways. They, they don't really ask a lot of questions. I think they need to be armed with kind of a list of questions they should be routinely asking. You know, Michael, I'm kind of interested to get your take on something. I think you're very familiar with the Education Quality Outcome Standards Board. You know, what if we had something similar in college athletics where they're going to be externally audited on a regular basis, right? Where, you know, these, these athletic departments, they're looked at. There's incentives, there's sanctions, there's processes. And if all of these things happen by an external auditor, my boards be forced to provide some integrity and compliance around athletics. In a way that they are not right now. I mean, obviously regional accreditors are involved in a little bit, but they don't really have teeth. We saw that down at the University of North Carolina. But it's clear to me that boards and presidents are not adequately equipped for what has happened to college athletics over the last 30 to 40 years.

I think it's such an interesting idea, Jeff. I confess I never thought about it until you raise it. And I can just imagine as a tool to empower the boards, right with giving them very clear information around what are their goals for their program, what are the things that they say our student athletes should be doing and what are the things that we don't want them doing and have very clear insight into it. That would be everything from graduation rates to do they have time to study and things of that nature. Where are they actually allocating time? I think it'd be fascinating for boards and ask, is this really in the spirit of what we want our university to be doing? I think it's a very interesting idea. I think the other question though it points to, Jeff, is who has the power to in fact change the model? And as we're setting, you know, as we're talking about this, I'm getting more convinced conviction on the other three topics I want to make sure we hit one possibility right is the notion of the two tiered model that Victoria described. So this notion that you'd have vertical integration of the Olympic sports with the national governing bodies and I think by implication greater connection for basketball and football with, with their professional leagues. And that would certainly, I think, change the power dynamic from the schools and conferences potentially. And then the second tier of this, as Victoria described it, of course, is the restoration of PE and that participation mindset of athletics, the clubs, intramurals. And as you know, Jeff, from my, my book From Reopen to Reinvent, I'm strongly in favor of more individuals doing far more. Fitness is just part of their student experience in high school and the like. And not just with a sports bias, but with a fitness bia. But fitness bias. I think that participatory piece is so critical as is the notion of using fitness to build up healthy habits of, of lifelong fitness and wellness so that more individuals can reach their potential as human beings. And so in my mind, the suggestion by Victoria isn't just smart for the varsity athletes in sports like volleyball or track and field or gymnastics, but those as well as for all students. Because we're not just trying to build lifelong learners in school in My view, but also individuals who will commit to lifetimes of healthy habits more generally. But. But I guess let's stay on the question of vertical integration itself, Jeff, because it might wrest power away from colleges and conferences in some interesting and perhaps unpredictable ways. And I don't know if that's a good answer to the student athlete health question, mind you, given the scandals we've seen in, say, USA gymnastics, or even more recently with women's soccer and the like. But I guess I'm curious, Jeff, do you think that that vertical integration might start to change the power dynamics and start to move some of these the way they've always been done, if you will?

You know, Michael, I love this idea. A producer of a national show that's doing something on college athletics asked me recently, you know, why do American college have athletic departments in the first place? And it really, this idea really brings back the notion of why we had athletics in the first place at colleges and universities in terms of mind, body and spirit. You know, it's clear the current system is broken. You know, me and you talk a lot about our kids on this podcast. And I realized that maybe all parents see the world differently through the eyes of their children. I wasn't an athlete growing up, but I think the big difference I think we can all agree on now between my generation Gen X and now Gen Z, is the growing specialization of sports. You know, my daughters are. Are 10 and 12 about to turn 11 and 13, and basically as they finally decide what sports they like to do. And by the way, let's add the pandemic in here, which two years where they weren't able to really do a lot of stuff, they're now doing things with kids who decided, or maybe their parents did at age 5 or 6 or 7, that this was their sport. Now, I'm not critical at all if those kids like those sports that they started so much earlier. But, you know, we're building this college system basically starting way back in elementary school, and there's this hyper specialization that happens because, you know, when I'm talking to parents, I think a lot of parents want their kids to get that sports scholarship, which is largely a myth. And we probably should talk about that at some point or as I talk about in my last book, and who gets in and why. You know, sports really gives you a leg up in the admissions process, especially at selective colleges. So I would love to have a model where sports is, again, just part of that mind, body, spirit in higher education. And we have this, you know, pre Professional league, but where athletes are just part of a broader wellness program. So, you know, we have the pre professional league in certain sports and then in other sports. It's just a great wellness program for, for more students who want to participate. I, I think a lot about my daughter in middle school now, where they have wellness, where we used to have health growing up, but, but more important, they're required to play a sport which takes the place of physical education, and they have to do that every season. And you know, maybe they don't want to do a team sport, so they have to do yoga or light conditioning or spinning and such. And as I was thinking about her in middle school, I'm like, why not bring that model to the college level where everybody has to participate in some sort of, of wellness and, and physical education.

Jeff, I, I totally agree and I, I know we keep looking for places to disagree on this show, but this is not going to be one of them because, and you know, David Epstein's voice is loudly in my head right now. He's the author of the book Range for those that don't know and read it if you don't know it. It's an incredible book about the dangers of early specialization, frankly, or at least how that generally doesn't result in success, as in the Roger Federers who do lots of sports and only specialize later are far more common than the Tiger woods stories. But I guess I'm stuck on this question of who has the power and what could change things, because as you know, and it sort of comes off of what you just said, the other thing I'm drawn to is more of a European model of sport where athletics isn't quite so coupled with the schools themselves. But, but of course, like I'm not naive, I get why giving up the culture of varsity sports and especially football and basketball would be a problem for so many schools and alumni communities and even their business models. But I've, I've always been drawn to the model of having these sports be for profit affiliates, quite frankly, Jeff, where, where they would have employee relationships with the students at these schools and take it as, you know, as it were, the question of their elite athletic participation out of the jurisdiction of the schools themselves. So there'd still be a connection for fan and marketing purposes, but it would be entirely separate from governance and the like. And, and I guess, you know, we talked a lot about the courts and the different power structures that are changing things up, but it seems to me the other thing that could change this, frankly, is the irs, namely saying forget about taxing the endowment question. You know, that big time athletics program at some of these schools, they're really unrelated business income and they should be taxed as such. Anything in the offing, you know, like that. Jeff, you think, or is this just wishful thinking on my part?

So Michael Unfortunately I think it might be wishful thinking on your part because I think this is just so ingrained in our culture and in our society. And again, I go back to, to the scandals at Penn State and Michigan State and usc and you just name the list, go down and down and nothing changed. And so it is probably wishful thinking on your part. But I want to finish with one set of statements because we've spent a whole two episodes on this question of college athletics and of course we're just scratching the surface here and we may not spend, I don't want to promise we're definitely not going to spend more time on athletics this season, but we don't have any plans at this point. But I think it's worth going back to this question about why even spend two episodes when for those attending Division 1 schools, for example, the participation rate of students in varsity sports was 11.5%. For example, in Division 2 it's 15.7. In Division 3 it's 21.5. So we're still talking, talking about, you know, under 25% at any of these institutions in terms of students participating in sports. And as we learned from Victoria, mad among Division 1 men's basketball and football, which of course gets all the attention on TV and in the press, we're talking about only 3.5% of total athletes. And less than 40% of these athletes are doing anything with name and image and likeness, as we heard, and across the mid majors like so less elite programs. Matt thought it was less than 10% doing anything like it. So I think it comes back to what Victoria said, that these athletes really sell college and the idea of college to American families because college is that experience and not just the classroom. And as I saw in my reporting for who gets it and why, it also is such a big part of the admissions process. They really see parents and students increasingly, especially at elite colleges, are really seeing it as a way in. And so I don't think it's going to play a lesser part in our society. I think it's actually going to continue to play as much if not even more of how we think about higher education.

It's well said, Jeff, all around and an important reminder that these expenditures don't just show up as marketing dollars, but they are both that as well as a big piece of shaping up what is the American college experience for many 18 to 22 year olds, as well as their broader communities. At a time when, you know, views of college are at historic lows, that's worth keeping in mind when we talk about sports and colleges, both the positives and the negatives of those dynamics, because they do matter. And with that, we'll wrap up this particular episode and offer a big thank you to Victoria and Matt for helping us through two fascinating episodes on this season of Future you. For all of you, for listening and your thoughts. And we'll be back next time on Future you. It.