On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss
"On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss" is a captivating podcast that explores the intersection of sports, culture, and politics through thought-provoking conversations. Hosted by Andrew Maraniss, bestselling author and director of the Vanderbilt Sports & Society Initiative, the podcast features a diverse lineup of guests—including athletes, authors, activists, and thought leaders—who bring unique perspectives on topics ranging from sports history and social justice to personal resilience and current events. Whether you're a sports fan, history buff, or curious thinker, "On The Ball" is your ticket to meaningful dialogue and inspiring storytelling.
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On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss
Episode 61: Yussuf Khan, Chris Kluwe, Johanna Mellis, Lou Moore & Aquasia Shaw
Yussuf Khan, founder of FirstandPen.com, leads a discussion on the current state of athlete activism at both the professional and collegiate levels. Joining him are Michigan State professor and author Lou Moore, former NFL player Chris Kluwe, Benedict College professor Aquasia Shaw, and Ursinus College professor Johanna Mellis. This discussion was recorded during the 2nd Annual Sports & Activism online symposium hosted by the Vanderbilt Sports & Society Initiative and the James Lawson Institute for Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements at the Vanderbilt Divinity School on May 15, 2025.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending where in the world you're joining us from today. Thank you so much for being a part of this. My name is Andrew Marinus, and I'm the Director of Special Projects at the Vanderbilt Athletic Department, where one of those special projects is our Vanderbilt Sports and Society Initiative. And so today, this is our second annual sports and activism symposium, and sponsored by the Sports and Society Initiative and the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Social Movements at the Vanderbilt Divinity School. It may seem like an unusual pairing to bring together athletics and the Divinity School for something like this, but when you think about the history of this university and two of the most important institutions alums of this university, including one behind me, Reverend James Lawson, it makes perfect sense. So I see the Sports Society Initiative really as the living legacy of Perry Wallace, who was a pioneering basketball player here at Vanderbilt in the late 1960s, desegregated the Southeastern Conference, and really was a voice of reason and truth throughout his entire life, certainly during his time here as an athlete, but also until the day that he died, really telling the same truth about the racism that he had encountered here and just so much wisdom on life in general and really a courageous example, I think, of the profound impact that sports and athletes can have on institutions and society. An event like this also continues the important work of Reverend Lawson who was a Vanderbilt Divinity student when he led the lunch counter sit-ins here in Nashville in 1960 and well into his 90s as Dr. Shepard was such a close colleague of him knows, was a fearless truth teller and a moral conscience of the country in many ways. So we have truly an all-star lineup of hosts and panelists with us today. We'll have three different panels. And I'll introduce our first host. But before we get to that, I'd like to introduce the first all-star of the day, my friend and collaborator on this annual project, Dr. Phyllis Shepard, who is the executive director of the James Lawson Institute. Take it away, Phyllis.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Andrew. Thank you very much. Thank you all for being here. Yes, this is our second year, and I'm very excited about it. And let me just say that part of that excitement is because This is the fourth year of the James Lawson Institute. And each year we have tried to come up with new and creative and effective ways to bring the message of nonviolent direct action to a broader public, recognizing that we need to be collaborative, we need partners, and now we consider all of you partners. So I'm hoping that as you listen today that you hear this as an initiative about preparing the next generation and expanding the knowledge of the current generation of those involved in nonviolent direct action to bring about justice and to transform the society in which we live, which is what Reverend Lawson constantly pressed upon us as we have been building this Institute. Thank you and welcome.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Dr. Shepard. All right, so we're ready to begin our first panel on the current state of athlete activism. Our host for the panel is my friend Yusuf Khan, who is the founding editor of firstandpen.com. which their mission is to inform, inspire, and connect through voices of color in sports. Yousef will introduce his four amazing panelists. So all of you who are a part of that panel, please unmute yourselves and turn on your cameras. But Yousef, the floor is yours.
SPEAKER_02:Excellent. Well, thank you, Andrew. And thank you, Dr. Shepherd. I really appreciate everyone coming together and giving us this opportunity to have this very important discussion. So very, very excited to speak with everybody. So as Andrew mentioned, my name is Yusuf Khan. I'm CEO and founder of First in Pen. And we are dedicated to sports stories through voices of color and sports. Very excited to host this session. And I'm going to jump right into it and introduce our are four panelists. So we have Dr. Quasia Shaw from Benedict College. Dr. Shaw has also written for us at First and Penn. We have Professor Lou Moore, now from Michigan State University, who is also a contributor to First and Penn. We have Chris Cluey, who is former punter with the Minnesota Vikings. Excuse me. And Dr. Johanna Mellis from, and I know I'm going to mispronounce this, forgive me. Is it Yersinus University? Did I pronounce it right?
SPEAKER_05:It's Ursinus. It's okay. Ursinus. No one can say it ever.
SPEAKER_02:Ursinus University. So really excited to have the four of you and have this discussion on the athlete activism in sports. So I'll get started. And Lou, I'd like to start with you because I want to go from a historical perspective. And obviously, that's your forte.
UNKNOWN:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:I think everyone is fully aware and understand that sports, society, politics, they've always had an intimate relationship, even though many times people tried to deny it, but they've always coexisted. So, Lou, if you can just give us a little background on some of the history as it relates to athlete activism in sports. I know you've written many, many times on it, but I'd love to give us, you know, our audience a little bit of an intro into it.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, gosh. Jeez. So it's like, where do you start? So I'll just start post-World War II. I think one of the guys I like to point out all the time is Joe Louis. And people don't think about Joe Louis in that way. He was the heavyweight champion from 1937 to 1947. And towards the end of his career, he was like, look, my biggest fight, the one I still have left, is against Jim Crow. And he writes this great article in Salute. I don't know if he actually wrote it, but his name's on it, about fighting Jim Crow and he spent about a good two years in the political space advocating for black people to register to vote about the need to stop Jim Crow and about the need to stop the poll tax in the South. So he's really like kicking off this movement of athlete activism. Now he'll start to take a I started to go away a little bit in politics as it gets a lot of pushback from from others in that space. And also when Dewey loses in 48, I think he steps back. But then you have Jackie Robinson, who really steps into that place in the late 1940s. And for the next trying to do the math, about 23 years until he passed away in 1972, he's constantly talking about, you know, ending Jim Crow, police brutality, voting, registering people to vote. Going after now, Jackie's Republican, but he'll switch in the mid-60s and really going after the Republican Party. Obviously, there's Russell, there's Ali, there's Rose Robinson, who's a Black woman in the late 1950s who refused to stand for the national anthem at a track event. So this is what Howard Bryant calls the heritage, right? The people who set up that next generation to get to, I'm sure, what we'll get to today, this kind of post-Trayvon Martin era. I don't know how much time I have. I could take the whole time, but I will be quiet now.
SPEAKER_02:No, that's perfect. Thank you, Lou. Other sports have now sort of been open to this idea of athlete activism and also social issues, political issues coming into that realm. So talk to us a little bit about the swimming community, how that has now been subjected to this sort of scrutiny. And also volleyball is another interesting one, but I'd like you to touch on swimming first.
SPEAKER_05:I was going to say, I am too uninformed about volleyball to be able to speak intelligently to it. Yeah, swimming is such an interesting sport in terms of the actual organized sport. It is a historically white sport. I would very easily call it a white supremacist sport in terms of how it's been organized historically and has sought to exclude black and brown people around the world in the US, but obviously from Africa to Asia, everywhere, to prevent them from competing in the sport. And Kevin Dawson has an amazing book that I always, that I teach in class. I always recommend that people talk about kind of how do we go from like West African peoples from being like the strongest swimmers and canoers in the world to like just being, you know, the drowning rates being massive because of lynching and things like that in the US. But to kind of get to the present day, I mean, I would say from like the mid 2015s onward, we started seeing more black swimmers in particular being more successful in the sport. Simone Manuel probably being the most well-known and there had been several before so I'm not going to say she's the first but and they started speaking about the barriers that they faced in terms of swimming and having like nobody in the swimming world looking like like them and how hard it's been for people to take them seriously so and especially around 2020 there was a lot a fair bit of activism within the sport about let's talk about these barriers and how drowning impacts everybody including the black community but also the brown and the white community because of It's really like, even though limiting access to pools has been a racist thing, primarily, it's also been a classist socioeconomic thing. I would say in the last two years, if we're thinking about activism and like not just progressive left-wing activism, but also fascist right-wing activism, swimming has some of the biggest names. Riley Gaines is a huge name and someone that I feel like I need to talk about as much as possible because she's gone after Leotard for several years, claiming that Leah Thomas took an opportunity from her, even though they tied. And if Leah Thomas hadn't been swimming, she wouldn't have gotten any better results. But the fact that she's made it all the way up to the White House and having basically state legislation, I think in Georgia, basically kind of being centered around her has been really horrifying. And the sport has been relatively silent. There have been a few kind of statements that have been released from NCAA's swimmers in particular that have tried to fight this. But by and large, the sport's been super, super quiet, even as people like Katie Ledecky have really, like, really, their careers have just continued to blossom and they continue to be very successful. And the white female swimming world has gotten more and more, like, notoriety and sort of attention in the media. But they've been so silent and complicit in this, like, real fascist anti-trans lens. So, like, Lou, I could keep talking but I will stop there and let other people share their insights, obviously.
SPEAKER_02:No, that's perfect. And I'm glad you touched on the pro side, because that'll bring me to Chris to talk about professional sports. Obviously, Chris, you know, you were a kicker, a punter, excuse me, for the Minnesota Vikings for many, many years. And on the NFL side and professional athlete side, right, there's always that balance of how do you, you know, maintain your sort of athletic focus, but you want to speak out on social issues as well that affect you, your family, your friends, etc. And obviously, you have a very personal case. connection to that opportunity to talk out. So I'd love to talk a little bit about your experience while you were playing and then also in the recent, you know, just within the last six to eight months, what's been happening.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah, no, it's, and thank you so much to the other speakers, you know, kind of for bringing up the history of like sports activism, because I went to UCLA. So obviously, Jackie Robinson, Kenny Washington, like big, big parts of, you know, just me being a student at UCLA is like, that's part of the school's legacy. And as a professional athlete, you spend a lot of time on your sport, right? And people have this conception that like, oh, you can only be your sport, right? Like, that's what you're known for. But I've always looked at it as, yeah, I happen to be really good at sports. But I'm also a huge nerd. Like I love video games. I love reading. I love doing all these other things. And as a human being, I should care about the society that I live in because if it affords me the chance to be the best person that I can be, well, everyone else should have that same opportunity. And we see very clearly that that's not the case. And from a competitive standpoint, I want to know that when I go out on the field and I kick your ass, I kicked your ass at your 100% that you didn't have to run the race with me. with, you know, a hundred pound weight tied to your leg. Cause then I didn't really beat you. And as a straight white guy, right? Like I'm on easy mode. There are a lot of people who don't have my privilege that don't have my advantages. And personally, I don't think that's fair. And so when it comes to speaking out in sports, and when I spoke out for the Vikings, I was approached by a group of Missions for marriage equality that asked me to speak out for LGBTQ rights. And when I looked at what they were asking me to do, which was to oppose an amendment that would have banned, that would have banned same-sex marriage in the state of Minnesota. I was like, well, you know what? someone to speak out for me if i was the one in trouble and i'm in the position of power here like i have the platform to speak out on this if i expect this from other people i have to be willing to do it myself like because otherwise it just it doesn't make sense like society doesn't work if that's if that's the case and so that that's kind of been the driving force behind me speaking out is like what would I want if I was on the other side of this equation? And if it's, I would want someone to speak out, well, then I got to be the one to do it. And so people probably know me most recently for being the guy getting arrested and dragged out of the city council chambers because they wanted to put a MAGA plaque on our public library. And this was back in February. And at the time, you know, this is Trump's first, you know, two months in office and we're seeing all the terrible stuff that his administration is doing. And I'm like, where are my democratic elected officials? Like where, Where is the party of John Lewis? Where is the party of good trouble? Like, why isn't anyone doing anything? And then I was like, well, if I expect them to do it, I got to be willing to do the same. And so, yeah, I decided to, you know, peacefully, civilly disobey and, you know, again, just carry on that proud tradition that it's not just athletes that have done it. It's been plenty of people that have done it. You know, Reverend Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the suffragette movement. Like there's, America has a long, long history of people peaceful civil disobedience. And as athletes, we can bring a lot of prominence to that role because people do pay attention to what we say. We just have to have the courage to say
SPEAKER_02:it. Right. Excellent. And I'm going to come to Equasia now. Equasia, obviously you've written about this, and I think everyone here has had some personal experiences with different issues that have affected us. You coming from University of Texas, right? DEI department, professor there, and we've seen a lot of things go down with Texas. So I'd love to hear your perspective, not only personally as it relates to University of Texas, but just the general idea of of what you experienced in a big, big time sports school?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, so it's always interesting when we hear these conversations, especially with how far UT actually got this year in a college football playoffs and thinking about what that meant. And so I had actually wrote an article that talked about the way that recruiting had just kind of recovered after they fired, what, 75 odd people from their institution. And it has been noted that a lot of these individuals, they were from marginalized populations. It was people of color and were women, and they weren't all directly related to this kind of DEI concept following this anti-DEI framework and policy that they were so heavily trying to implement. And so this idea that whose voice really wants to be heard and whose voice are we going to... accept, right? Whose activism, whose level of resistance is going to be more palatable and who's going to be disciplined. And so we see kind of this erasure of black and brown individuals and women and other disadvantaged populations being removed from the institution. But then two weeks later, we have this big spectacle of welcoming these black athletes from all over the world to come play for, you know, the greatest football program in the country. And there's no conversation about what you just did and what kind of institution, what kind of environment they're about to walk into if they do commit to this kind of university. And so it's this idea of kind of performative acts, what we are gonna do to kind of recruit you, recruit your blackness, recruit the culture and the things that we want here. And then we wanna kind of embrace that from the rest. of your campus experience, the rest of what it is to be University of Texas and other big sports schools like that. We see examples of that, like Notre Dame, they used to do their kind of like their highlight reels of, and they always used to have like this really like ethnic, some people refer to it ghetto music in the background, right? They're playing hip hop and all these kinds of things. you're appealing to a certain group of people. You're saying like, you're good enough because we want you to come play here. We want you to come perform for us. We want you to come and do us this service, but we don't accept any other part of you. And so when we think about that, when we think about activism, we're thinking about who really has the right, who really has the privileged to be able to exercise those rights to stand up and to say things and to kind of put themselves in those spaces to resist against, you know, dominant ideology. And I'll talk a little bit more about those types of individuals too, who might be a little bit more or less allowed to speak more freely about things that they're experiencing.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm glad you said that, because when it comes to speaking freely, you know, I think a lot of athletes are very hesitant to do that. Right. I mean, you can go back to Michael Jordan. Republicans buy sneakers, too. Right. So they don't want to sort of dilute any possible revenue stream or offend anybody. But on the college side and equation, I'm going to stay with you for a minute on the college side ever since 2021. when NIL was first introduced. We have seen this, what was very strong at one time, athlete activism has really dissipated and really faded on college campuses. Many of the protests and the fights and the struggles have now been authored by the students as opposed to the athletes. And I think much of it is because of the NIL introduction and legality of it because there's a lot of money at stake. You know, from your experience, obviously you were at Texas and you're around athletes a lot. You know, do you feel like NIL has in some way silenced athlete activism at the college level?
SPEAKER_06:Oh, absolutely. We actually just started, I just edited a NIL textbook. So that is coming soon, shameless plug. Or just talking about kind of the landscape and the changing of college athletics right now with the implementation of NIL and what that does to not only college athletics, but the actual athletes themselves. Some of my students, they were bringing in million dollar NIL deals. They were driving Lamborghinis and Porsches and all kinds of stuff to class. And that was the normal. When you're at an institution that large and that, successful it was easy to kind of see the amount of money you could make even if you were one of those athletes who weren't bringing in those kinds of deals it was kind of the idea of that could be me and so thinking about kind of the backlash even earlier in 2020 with the george floyd and the black lives matter movement um There were athletes at University of Texas specifically on the football team too, who stood up, tried to stand their ground and said, we're not gonna recruit for you anymore. We're not gonna play for you anymore. If we keep with our racist school song, we keep with the statutes that we have on campus. They were kind of pointing out all of these things and they saw what the negative consequences could be. And that was even before NIL. So a lot of people are saying, you know, these students are being apathetic or they're not really down for the cause and things of that nature. But I think it's all preservation. I think at this point, they're kind of like, I don't want to be retaliated against. I don't want to have to suffer consequences. And so they're doing the best that they can to protect themselves because they want to make sure that they can make that money. They can make those deals. They can stay on these teams and they can stay relevant. They don't want to make the wrong person angry or upset or make the wrong enemy that is going to affect their livelihood. And so when we're talking about hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars, that's a lot more of a different conversation than, you know, an hourly job. And so I think that is a huge barrier. And it's one of the reasons why a lot of athletes choose to kind of just turn the other cheek or state of themselves when it comes to certain issues that are happening around them.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And Johanna, if we continue on the college athletics side, as we know, football is the biggest driver of revenue in many cases, in many athletic departments, particularly Texas, where equation used to be that helps fund the rest of the sports programs that are out there for many of the quote unquote, you know, non-revenue driving sports, you know, when it comes to those other sports, many of them are now subjected to fights. They're going to have to fight when it comes to title nine, for example, because some of these programs might get cut, particularly on the women's side, you know, obviously you're a swimmer and, um, That's a sport that in many cases doesn't get a lot of publicity as compared to football and basketball and things like that. But where do you think some of the athletes in the non-football, non-basketball world, how can they express themselves in this activism light, but still maintain their athletic eligibility and not be shunned and things of that nature?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:This is a tough question. It reminds me of some discussions I had with students this semester. So I'm at a Division III school. We only have 1,500 students on a good enrollment year. We're struggling for enrollment currently. But about 42% of our students are athletes, right? So Division III schools, athletics is like a huge part of our culture. And so a lot of students were very concerned about NIL and the transfer portal and how that might eventually impact Division III. And I promise I'll go back to your question a second. But we talked about sort of how most of them are playing sports that are considered to be non-revenue generating. And so a lot of them were like, oh, I'm very grateful I can play. And that was kind of the rhetoric. And I think there are probably many ways to think of this idea of being made to feel grateful. I think football and basketball players are made to feel that similarly, but for different reasons. And I think a lot of these, as you said, quote unquote, non-revenue generating sports, it's this idea and women's sports in particular, that like you should just be thankful to be able to have a spot on the team and you should be even thankful that your school has a team. And what was really interesting is some of these athletes, both men and women, and I'm not going to name which sports, but like in these non-review generating sports, we're saying like, I'm tired of being made to feel grateful. I'm tired of being made to feel like I should be advocating for the existence of this sport. And I said, all right, we're going to talk about the creation of markets. Like why were these specific sports deemed to be ones that needed to have a market eventually created around them and the development of like uh the perception of racialized labor and gendered labor and all these things and a lot of them felt like there was very little they could do and obviously division three is very different from division one but in terms of your question about finding space to advocate for themselves i think a lot of them see them as being in competition with athletes and revenue generating sports and that's just a sense i get i i have to say i'm not like familiar with the literature. I'm sure that people are doing really interesting research about this. And I'd be very curious to hear what athletes within the athletes.org, kind of one of the unofficial kind of college athlete-like player unions that's forming, kind of what they hear from athletes in some of these non-revenue generating sports. But I think a lot of them feel that these athletes and revenue generating sports are quote unquote greedy. And so there were a lot of students who were saying like, I think athletes are just being greedy. And I was like, hold on like these athletes that are getting these big deals they're not the problem like we're sort of misdirecting I think our our frustration rather at this instead of looking at the system but as these athletes who are quote-unquote greedy and how especially with this house settlement deal that um due to this house settlement deal there are going to be these roster limits and these roster limits are going to be taking spots away from us and I know the roster limit question is still very much in flux and I actually meant to look it up for today I think there were some things that about a few weeks ago that I'm not super up to date on but I think part of it is they see themselves as a competition with one another. And so I kept telling them, like, literally, this is the divide and conquer rule that like colonizers have used for centuries to try to keep people from uniting with one another. So I think there's space. And I kept telling them there's space for you all to actually see your interests as being united. And you all may experience things very differently, but these causes all come from the same source. So I think that's where there's some space for them to advocate with and for each other, rather than saying like, oh, I'm in a non-revenue generating sport. And these other sports are because that because these other athletes are greedy, they're taking like spots away from us. And it's like, like, I think that's such a like, capitalist kind of imperialist competitive perspective. So I think that's kind of where maybe like there could be some space for activism.
SPEAKER_02:Now, Chris, I'm going to come to you and then Lou, I'm going to come to you. So if we look at a little bit of history, Chris, obviously you were a pro athlete, you played at UCLA, big division one school, but when you were playing, there was no NIL, right? You had to be very aware of, you couldn't have a summer job, you couldn't earn income, right? Different sorts of restrictions that you had, you know, but now you look at it, college athletics is huge, huge, huge money. It's operated almost like a pro system. In many ways, it is a pro system. Now, you know, do you think I think that with NIL and a lot of the other, you know, compensation things they were talking about, Johanna just mentioned about the house versus NCAA settlement. You know, when you look back at it, you see UCLA now becoming a member of the big team, there's travel and all these things. Do you think athletes, college athletes can actually have a voice? in dictating some of the trends or some of the practices or just any sort of demands in this big money environment that we live in? Or do you think that it's more like they're just going to be quiet because they're making so much money and this is just the way it has to be because it's a business?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, no. So it's a really interesting question. And I think kind of riffing off what Joanna was saying is that this is ultimately at its core, the basic question of management versus labor, right? Like we have the people who are running the NCAA, the big donors, like most of them tend to be rich white men, right? Who are generally the same people who run NFL teams, who are generally the same people who own baseball teams, right? Like these are all the same people with all the money. And then The athletes are the labor. We're the ones who show up. We're the ones who actually go through the punishment that we put our bodies through. And yeah, we get compensated for it. But at the end of the day, we're not getting equity stakes in teams. That's very, very rare for an athlete to actually have equity in a team. I think probably Patrick Mahomes and maybe Peyton Manning are the only ones I can currently think of. And that's because they made hundreds of millions of dollars playing as a quarterback. So I think from an athlete perspective, unionizing would be a really good idea like and not even just by sport like we should have a trade union for college athletes like because then that way you can collectively bargain you can assert your power as a laborer and honestly from my perspective I don't even want to see something like NIL I want to see college athletics treated as an actual job because I think this idea of being a scholar athlete might have worked in the past when the time demands weren't as as onerous as they are now, but to be a college athlete in this day and age means you are dedicating at least four to six hours per day to your sport, right? And then you're expected to carry a college load on top of that. And then you have to find time to actually be a college student on top of that. And it's frankly, it's unrealistic to expect that to be the case. And so what we should be doing is saying, you are a college athlete, you are an employee of this college. We give you healthcare, we give you a salary. And then if you want to keep the scholarship idea, once you are done playing your sport, you can then come back and we will pay for your schooling for four years or five years or whatever it happens to be. Because then for the guys who or for the people who are going to go on and do their sport professionally, most of them generally don't want to come back for schooling, right? They want to focus on their sport and that's fine. They should be allowed to do that. But for the other 99% of people who are never going to do their sport at a professional level, they can now actually enjoy their school experience, get the education that they want and get something beneficial out of their college experience, as opposed to being like, well, crap, how am I going to juggle this, you know, four to six hours today, sometimes even more depending on sport versus getting a and these in my classes versus hanging out with my friends versus in some other cases taking care of my family right like working a job paying for my education so yeah i think a lot of this as i said earlier comes down to the idea of management versus labor athletes do need to unionize they need to assert collective bargaining power and as a society we need to take a step back and look at is the scholar athlete model one that's even feasible in this day and age
SPEAKER_02:Lou, so we're going to go back now since you're a historian, right? We'll take it back a little bit. We have names like the O'Bannons, right? Ed O'Bannon and UCLA Chris, right? Your alma mater. We had the Northwestern football team. We had 2015 Missouri football team. We had 1992 UNC football team. These are all examples of athletes and teams and players and coaches, in Missouri's case, coming together to stand against a certain issue. In most of the cases, it's racism. Missouri threatened to boycott a game because the administration hadn't taken the racism seriously, that the students were protesting. The football players and the coaches actually stood together and they said, we'll sit out a game. And then they realized, oh, shoot, that'll cost us about a million dollars if you forfeit a game. Let us try to address it. And it actually worked because the president ended up resigning and changes were come. So I preface that by saying that, excuse me, I preface this by saying that, and I think it's important for people to understand that they don't, these athletes nowadays don't get taught those examples, right? And I think that's part of the problem is that because they don't know that it has worked in the past, that it could work now. So, Lou, if you could talk a little bit about the past and some of these examples and how we can maybe educate current athletes to say, listen, there are benchmarks. There is precedent. Right. And how do we do that effectively so we don't mess up their futures? But we're actually trying to strengthen their futures by showing them the past.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, no, that's a good point. And I think one of the things you point out is that there are limited amounts of these things happening, right? So when you go back to the late 60s, I think there's no more than 40 incidents on these college campuses. You know, some of them have, there's documentaries like the Wyoming 14 or the Syracuse 8, but these are very limited. And part of it, I think it touches on what the others have spoken about is that the NCAA and colleges have a lot of power. And so once you went from, I think you go from four-year guarantee to 1973. It's like this one-year renewable. You don't have scholarships. You don't have a lot of this happening. So that's why sometimes you mentioned like Missouri 2015 is so big because it was everybody involved, right? So if we go back to the 60s, I say, well, every black athlete was going to protest. Wyoming had 14. Syracuse had eight. Missouri, I think there was more than 50 of those guys, right? So the amount of of power that they have kind of increased. But what happened is that they didn't use it, right? And they didn't use it for very good reasons. They don't want to get kicked out of school. Or now it's, I don't want to use the NILs. But I think you're right in the sense that once we start telling athletes the power that they have and then showing them how it actually has worked, whether it's Northwestern or Missouri, that becomes dangerous for the institutions. I remember being on a college campus right after the Missouri incident. So a year and a half later, and I was talking to an AD, and I won't say what college campus, Vanderbilt, but I asked about it and He's no longer with us, but he was saying like, yeah, I think a lot of ADs were worried, right? Because at that time you hadn't seen anything like that, right? We'd always talked about, oh, the Fab Five should do something or these athletes should do something, but you've never seen it. And I think... ADs and colleges knew right away the power that these kids actually wielded. Like, you imagine if they did that before the championship game, whether it's basketball or football, how it would shut things down. So to get away from that, you don't teach that, but you also give something in return, not just to NIL, but if you look at these power five schools now, they have everything. Like if I'm an athlete, I'm not going to give up my 42-inch screen TV that's by my locker. I'm not giving up the lazy swimming pool, the barbershop, the music studio. Their dorm rooms are generally separated from the general population. I think if there's a student in there, he works for the team, right? And I've seen dorm rooms that have full-on basketball courts, movie theaters. And so these schools give and give and give to these athletes regularly. to keep them silent, right? So they don't, you know, buck the system. I like to point out when I talk about this, it's like Frederick Douglass, right, talks about this Christmas time on the plantation. Christmas time on the plantation was, here's some alcohol, here's party, here's lots of food. And what happens is the owners want the enslaved folks to forget about how bad they have it. And all of a sudden, I'm giving you all this stuff. And that's very similar, I see, that happens right now. We're giving you, as you guys said earlier, we're giving you all these things, all this money, all this nice thing, so you don't kind of rebel against the system, right? But as you suggest, history is very powerful. And I think that that's why students are A lot of these college athletes aren't around the general population, right? I think the majority of them probably take, especially the big time schools, probably take online classes now. So I was watching Florida after they won the national championship and some of the guys were asked, what are you going to do for class tomorrow? And more than half of them was like, I don't go to class, right? I'm online. And that's designed, right? It's easier for them to get their education, but it also keeps them away from the students who are also protesting or talking about things on campus.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And Chris, I'm going to come to you because you had mentioned about union, right? And unionizing of athletes at the college level. And I, I focus on the college because I think it's such an interesting business model. I really do. I think it's, it's more inclusive of society, business, et cetera. But we just saw Dartmouth men's basketball, you know, last year tried to unionize and they actually did, they were accepted. And the school was like, yeah, we're not even, we're not paying you any mind. We're not, we're going to ignore that you just actually unionized, you know? So what, what do students do? do in that case? Do they say, well, we're not going to play, but you have to then sacrifice what you have worked so hard for to say, well, I might sit out the entire season. Can I afford to even attend Dartmouth at that point? Right. Because I know obviously they're Ivy leagues and they don't give athletic scholarships, but you know, maybe they, they cannot afford it or, you know, some other things might happen. Do you think, or what would be your advice to athletes who have said, you know what, I'm sort of on, on the fence about, do I unionize or do I stay quiet?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. So that's, that's a really tough question that can only be answered by the individual, right? Because my situation is going to be different than someone else's situation and their situation is going to be different than someone else's situation. But at the end of the day, rights aren't given. Rights are taken. You have to fight if you want something. And history has shown that over and over and over again. Like no one who's in a position of power ever voluntarily says, we're going to give up some of that power to make your life better. That just doesn't happen. And a lot of times in order to engage in that fight, you do have to give something up. You have to be willing to sacrifice something. And it's what I think is important is that A lot of times these discussions center around like athletes of color, right? Like, or they center around women or trans people or, you know, people who are being oppressed. And what we need to have happen is people like me who are straight white men who benefit from the system currently in place. We need to be the ones on the front line saying this is not okay. And that we are willing to sacrifice some of the power that we get simply by virtue of being who we are, because that is is not fair to everyone else, and ultimately it is corrosive to our society as a whole. Because if your society has haves and have-nots, eventually the have-nots will reach a point where they're going to do whatever it takes to have their lives be livable the way they want to live. And as a history and poli sci major, I would prefer not to get to that point because that point never ends well. So instead, and that's why I'm saying why unions are so important, when we come together collectively we can accomplish so much, but it has to be people who are currently benefiting from the system, understanding that you got to be involved too. Like you've got to be out there on the front lines. You have to be part of, of the people that are sacrificing. You can't rely on the oppressed to do everything themselves. Like we have to be out there too. And so, yeah, I just, I think, I think for an athlete, it's also really tough because you have a limited lifespan, right? Like no, no athlete is going to be able to play their sport forever. And in most cases, like, especially in a sport like like football, you're only going to be able to play if you get the chance to play in the NFL for like three, three and a half years. So that makes it really hard to ask someone to sacrifice that. But at the end of the day, if no one is willing to sacrifice, if no one is willing to step up and collectively say, you know what, this might make it worse for us in the now, but it's going to be better for our descendants in the future. Well, then nothing ever really changes. So yeah, I'm not, I'm not going to say that people have to do that, but I would sure like it if people did that and I'm willing to do that. So I'm just hoping more people are willing to do that.
SPEAKER_02:Akwesha, I want to come back to you because you have very interesting experience, right? You come from a big, big school, Texas, right? And now you're at HBCU and each are still facing different challenges, right? And I think that's really interesting. But from an athlete point of view, right? Do you think, A, that if I, because I've written about this, you know, I think two, three years ago, if majority of the Texas players, particularly black Texas players had said, we are not going to play this week against Oklahoma if you are going to make us sing Eyes of Texas, right? We're just going to sit out. A, do you think that would work? Because we've seen the threats and the reactions that have come to the players when they tried to do that. And B, what do you think would happen at an HBCU campus if some of the HBCU students said, you know, listen, we're fighting for change. You know, we want change. We need better housing or whatever. And they came to the athletes to try to help. Do you think you would see that same type of activism at an HBCU that you might see at a Division I FBS school?
SPEAKER_06:That's a very interesting question, and it's something that I've been grappling with in research I'm currently doing. One, I want to say, and I want to piggyback off of what Chris said, collective activism and collective outrage is going to help. when someone with privilege, when someone from leadership, when someone with power is going to be at the helm of that push. Because we know that athletes of color, people of color, women, individuals from the LGBTQIA plus community, all of these marginalized populations, they do have a little bit more at risk. When we look at Texas specifically, I want to wholeheartedly say, yes, it would work, but we have seen in the past that they have called the bluff, especially on the school song. And it's, there's so many people of power who are behind that song. And that's the tradition. That's the backbone of Texas. That's what makes the Longhorns, the Longhorns, like they are riding and dying for that song. So I feel like, Yes, it would be great to see collectively a group of black athletes to say, hey, we're not gonna play, we're not gonna do this. But we would really need that push from leadership from straight white men with individuals with power on that campus to say, you know what, we are behind these students. And yes, we're going to resist against you playing the song and adopting the song to represent the University of Texas.
SPEAKER_02:So if I can, if I could jump in, what would happen if Arch Manning? had said, I'm gonna jump in. I'm gonna support that cause. All of a sudden you've got a notable name who hasn't barely even played yet, but the Manning name carries weight, right? Do you think that would help?
SPEAKER_06:Absolutely. I think for a couple of people, they might clutch their pearls a little bit. I think it'll be kind of one of those moments where it's like, are they serious? And then now you really have to think, do we call the bluff? Knowing how powerful that name is, that is the type of individual that you would need to be behind you to kind of say, all right, we're gonna actually try and make some change. There might be a little bit of shift here. So somebody like Arch Manning and someone with that much power The family that they have, yes, I absolutely think we would see conversations. I don't think it would happen outright. I think there would be conversations to see maybe there's ways we can mitigate this or kind of get around it or maybe not play it before the football. They'll try to negotiate ways to kind of have the song less visible, but I think they would definitely take the threat a little bit more seriously having an athlete like Arch Manning behind them. On the HBCU side, I think it's a little different because, you know, all all the athletes look the same. And so a lot of their issues that they're fighting, they're not necessarily fighting issues when it comes to power dynamics with race and things of that nature. I think it's just more so more so like. resource allocation and not having the funds, the access, the capability to support some of the things that they want. So I definitely think that they can collectively. I'm a big advocate for collective activism because it lessens the risk, right? If there's more of you out here pushing and fighting for the change that you want, it's a little bit more of an increased opportunity for your voice to be heard and less retaliation or repercussions for those individuals who are trying to stand up. I just think it's the capabilities of what the institutions have, you know, HBCUs, especially private ones, their resources are a little scarce and few in between. And so I think we would actually see a lot of backing from the regular student population coming into that as well, because it's issues that are not only gonna be affecting the athletes, it's going to be affecting all the students on campus. So I think in that way, that would be very effective. ways to use their voices because it's a community. It's all the students coming together. There's not so much a division or separation from the student athletes in the regular student population at a school like Benedict as it would be at a school like UT. So I think you would see a little bit more of a common cause, a little bit more of an easier collection with students at HBCU as opposed to at larger Power Five schools where they're trying to kind of look and seek for those people that they need to be on the front lines for them for their message to actually get heard.
SPEAKER_02:We have about 10, 15 minutes left. I just want to do one more question. Johanna, I'm going to aim it at you as it relates to college and then I want to transition to pro, but we are all professors at a different level. We've taught at institutions, et cetera, and we continue to teach. It doesn't matter about division, right? College athletics has changed dramatically. But on the other side of it, we see higher ed now under attack from many different areas, right? From political attacks, from funding cuts, et cetera, et cetera. And it's going to affect everybody. Do you think there's a point that I think it's coming very soon. But John, are you personally, do you think there's a point where athletics and academics have to stand together and say, now, listen, we are going to fight this$2.2 billion cut, this$400 million cut, et cetera, et cetera, because it affects all of us. It doesn't matter if you're an athlete or you're an academic or a student, et cetera. Or do you think that, you know what, athletics is heading in such a position, particularly at the FBS level, that you might only have two major conferences in the next five years where the SEC and Big Ten are like, listen, we can run by ourselves. Notre Dame, we can run by ourselves. And so we're not worried about the academic side of it. Where do you think that the next three to five years holds for the either inclusion of both or do they go their separate ways?
SPEAKER_05:Oh, this is such a tough question. I don't know if I have a good answer for that. I mean, I think... Oh, I think the only way from the academic side, I think the only way to like resist the fascist state. And I'm talking about our current government, but fashion has been on the rise. I mean, as, as, as us as anything. And I study, I do European history. I teach a lot about interwar European fascism. So there are obviously trends there. And then there are obviously a long history here. So from that perspective, I think the academics, I, we need athletics. And this is the case that I make to my school all the time. We're a small private school. So we fly into the radar. We don't have funding like that's, kind of threatened in the same way. But as I said, we've been struggling for enrollment for a very long time. And one of the struggles with enrollment is this message in the media that's been going on since Reagan in the 60s and 70s, if not earlier, that we don't need higher education and we're going to privatize higher education to keep black and brown people and women and activists out of, well, we can't, we can't, what is it? What did he say? We can't have these like radical proletariats entering college. We need to create more barriers for them. So I see it as kind of part of that longer fight, which dovetails actually really interestingly with the creation of the student athlete moniker. And as Lou already said, the decrease in like, I athletic fellowships from four to one year. But anyways, yeah. So I think from an academic side, we absolutely need athletics. We need to stand together because I think that this collective action we've been talking about, if there's a, if we can, If we can do this before football and other revenue sports potentially break off, and I think if we can get athletes invested in this idea that they are harming your educational opportunities, which is considered part of your pay, then I think that may click for them that if we are in this fight together and we resist what is now called the anti-DEI fight, but it's really this white supremacist fight that's been going on for so long, that this is actually harming your education, but also impacting what's going on in the field. We see the rates of harassing harassment that female basketball players is just going off the charts and most of them being female basketball players of color, right? So for me, I see all of these fights as being really, really deeply intertwined. And I think this kind of siloing of communities and this siloing of interests as equation of other people talking about, I think it's very dangerous. I get it from the athlete side that you only have so much space and you are worried about your own life. And there was a really good, interesting question about, you know, to what extent would unionizing potentially be an added stressor. I think that's kind of how it was phrased in terms of mental health because athletes already have so much that they have to think about. But I think really that's the only way is that we're in this kind of fight in the struggle together, but whether that's going to happen in a couple of years, I don't know, as I'm currently trying to think about what is all of our collect, what are all of our collective lives going to be like? And then the last thing that I'll say is that, I think we saw what happened in our college campuses with all these universities basically trying to take out all of these students who were protesting for Palestine. And when we talk about UT Austin, we talk about many campuses, what was it, Ohio State that put snipers on the roof, right? Like there were all of these kind of bellwethers that we saw all about all of the student activism on campus, some of which did include athletes and they were just taken out by Democrats included, right? So I think we have to see all of these domestic international struggles is really deeply intertwined in order to kind of fight together.
SPEAKER_02:Excellent. So I'm going to transition now to the pro side because we only have a few more minutes left. Lou, I'm going to come to you. You have mentioned Jackie Robinson. There's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. There's, you know, LeBron and Steph. We've seen Dawn Staley, right? A lot of the big names. But the problem is there's not many of them. And we don't know who that next layer will be to come up or if there will be a next layer, because we don't see that sort of handing of the baton like we saw from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s and even 90s. Do you think that in the pro level that there will be that next level? And where do you see it starting? Meaning what league do you see it coming from?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, that's a tough question. I'm
SPEAKER_02:giving you all
SPEAKER_03:tough questions today. I know. No, I would say one thing people have to keep in mind is that even when we talk about 60s and 70s, it's really a short period, right? Like, a lot of the activism is done in the early 70s, right? People got free agency came, people got paid, you know, people got on commercials. And so that really changed. Like, oh, I don't want to mess up my, you know, as the young kids say, I want to mess up my bag, right? Like, when you go from making$100,000 a year to a million dollars plus endorsement, that changes your relationship with the community. And I think That's why you have such this large gap. So like guys like Craig Hodges or Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf in the 90s, they're really like isolated figures. It's really then we'll get this kind of post-2012, you know, Trayvon Martin, the heat wearing like hoodies or something become a big deal, right? Which is very small thing. But from there until George Floyd, that's only eight years and it's really died down then, right? So to say like who's next, what's next is hard because again, small history, but we know it's coming, right?
UNKNOWN:So, you know,
SPEAKER_03:The reason why you're not going to see it right away is because the people who step out, they get punished, right? Ali lost three years of his career. John Carlos and Tommy Smith essentially lost their whole careers. Craig Hodges got blacklisted from the league. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, after that contract was up, after two or three years, he was gone. Kaepernick's gone. I think they penalized for a very specific reason. I was doing some research for my next project, and I was reading from guys from the 1980s. It's not basketball, it's baseball. They're like, if we split about racism we're gone right and so these superstar athletes in the 1980s are making a point like i i've seen the lesson that's going to happen to me and so it's very hard to predict here now 2025 who's coming next what sports plus i think when you add into and we haven't gotten that conversation today is the sporting landscape has completely changed when we talk about youth sports, right? Like, there are people who, since the age of five, have put in, like, two-a-days. They're not risking everything, and they're solely focused on their sport, right, and getting better. So I don't expect them to do anything because now, with NIL, now I only have to make it to college to get paid, right? But to get there, I gotta have whatever they call that mamba mentality. I gotta like focus totally on my sports. Then you add in, which we haven't had a conversation, AI, not Allen Iverson, but AI in the classroom, which means there's less and less critical thinking going on from our students. Like as college professors, I'm sure we could do a whole show on that, how frustrating it is. So you're going to get less, like say Chris Cluies out there who are, like he seems, he's a history major, a poli sci major, and he did the reading. They're not doing the reading as much, so they're not really prepared to have those battles. And it's no knockoff. knock on them because the tools are there. It's just frustrating as a professor, by the way. I'll stop there before I go off more on AI.
SPEAKER_02:No, and I think that's a very valid point. And it actually is a perfect transition to my last question that I'm going to pose to all of you. And Chris, I'm going to come to you first with this question. Do you feel like we have reached a point in the current environment that we are in, both in this country and maybe even worldwide in a sense, that focusing on social issues and focusing on cultural issues needs to take a backseat to the economic fight when it comes to justice and sports. And by that, I mean, for example, if Steph Curry and some of the big, big names that are making big, big money say, listen, we're not going to play. We're not going to show up. We're going to have a sit in unless X, Y, and Z changes, right? That's an economic type of fight versus athletes who maybe are not making any money or, you know, don't have as big a name. They sit out and they could be punished pretty severely. So do you think the fight needs to shift or have we reached that point in this environment where it needs to be an economic push versus a social and cultural one?
SPEAKER_04:Well, so the thing is, is that I think we've all been kind of dancing around the bigger problem, which needs to be addressed, which is the fact that what's happening right now is the result of late stage capitalism. And that's actually the fight we need to have. And that encompasses social issues, that encompasses economic issues, that encompasses athletics, that encompasses people who work at universities, who work at steel plants, like who basically anyone in our society Because you are operating under late stage capitalism, you are so fearful for your job because if you do not have your job, you cannot survive. And being an athlete is no different. And that's why you don't see athletes speak up. Because if you spend your entire life getting as good at your sport as you can be to get paid for it, you haven't developed those other skills that will allow you to get a job elsewhere. And under late stage capitalism, that means you potentially die. That means you're potentially... Your family potentially dies because like, make no joke, especially in football, a lot of these guys come from very poor socioeconomic backgrounds. Like getting that paycheck means they're not only lifting themselves out of poverty, they're lifting their family and generations of their family out of poverty. So if we really want to address this, like it can't just be an athletic thing. It has to be a full social movement of which athletics is a part saying we want things like universal healthcare. We want a universal basic income. We want to be able to live lives where we're not dependent on the whims of a rich old white dude signing his checkbook to determine whether or not we live or die. And so this conversation right here is focusing on the, you know, obviously the athletic side of that, but that's the fundamental underlying question that we really need to address as a society is, are we okay living in this type of world? And Personally, I don't want to live in that kind of world. I want to live in a world where people play sports because they want to play sports. And the people who are really good at playing sports, yeah, if other people want to give them some more money, that's cool. But it's not a matter of life and death. It's not a matter of your family starving in Mississippi because football was the only way out. That's what I want people to talk about. And that's what I want us to address because otherwise our society is still just going to keep crumbling because we're patchwork. We're not addressing the root cause.
SPEAKER_02:Johanna, I'm going to come to you. Same question. Do you think we've reached the point where the society push, the cultural push, the narratives there need to take a backseat to more of the economic fight when it comes to activism in sports?
SPEAKER_05:I don't see how we can separate it, to be honest. I also feel like that is an argument that people will say when they say, well, what about the white working class is they'll say, like, if we were to make this strictly a class based argument, then we can bring in the white working class. And that is what's going to get us somewhere. But that's not a that's that's inaccurate in a lot of different ways. And that also eliminate that also like leaves out the white middle class, which has a big role and late state capitalism and imperialism. So I don't think we can separate these things. I could see how a lot of people might see that focusing specifically on the economic argument that that might get more, that might create a broader base of support. But I think that eliminates the really key aspects, the key ways in which our society is discriminated against all these different people based on who they are. I also speak as someone with physical disabilities from being in a Vision One athlete from cognitive disability of ADHD. So I've been thinking a lot about how, frankly, eugenic the current structure is becoming more and more. I think our society has been eugenic for a very long time, but specifically going after the marginalized groups of society that are government, but this is widely held across the political spectrum, that people should be, how do I say, that the people's value only lies in the product they're able to produce for society. And I think humans deserve to exist because we're humans, not because of what we produce for society. And so for me, also only focusing on the economic argument also hinges on the fact that capitalism determines our value based on what it perceives to be as valuable. So that automatically eliminates people like me, but also disability history and eugenics is also based on a white society such as myself, right? So it eliminates all kinds of groups of people. Yeah, so I don't know how we could only focus on this as an economic argument, because I think that erases all of the history It erases many groups. And I just, I don't, to go back to Lou's point about AI, that is just frankly inaccurate if we were to do that, but I also show your frustration. So I just wanted to say that.
SPEAKER_02:Perfect. Equatia, I'll come to you and then Lou, I'll get you last. Same question, Equatia.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, I'm definitely going to piggyback on what Joanna said of this idea. It's the two are absolutely intertwined. They're entangled. I can't imagine the, having a discussion about one without having a discussion about the other. And so she actually said something very interesting, this idea of entrance convergence, right? That's what I thought of when I'm thinking about critical race theory, I'm thinking about Bell and this idea of we're only going to allow, we're only going to accept as much as you can when you are doing something for me, as long as I'm getting something out of this, right? And so we think about college athletics in the space of sport as, you know, this exploitative system where we're allowing you to do this. And going back to her point of, you should just be grateful that we're giving you this place in this place to play and to live out your dreams and to hopefully make some money for your family, you know, get this kind of idea of upward mobility, moving up socioeconomically, right? This idea of this exploitative system, controlling profitable system that only benefits one group of people. And so we say that it can, it is an economic conversation, obviously, but it is fueled by this idea of social and cultural issues and whose backs are being the ones who have to carry the weight and the burden of everything that we're talking about today. And those are usually gonna be people from the disadvantaged and marginalized populations. So they can't be one without the other. I feel like you can't ignore one because they both kind of economic, socially, culturally, they all kind of come in twine while we're having these conversations.
SPEAKER_02:Perfect. Lou, we got about five minutes left and I'm gonna finish with you since I started with you, right? We're gonna talk about history and come to the present, right? I'm going to preface the question to you by this. We have seen in history that when social, to everyone's point, when social, cultural, and economic factors come together, it is a much stronger fight, right? When they bind together, it is a much stronger fight. We saw Jackie Robinson at the, you know, protest the Alzheimer's game and said, I wish there was a black manager. And all of a sudden, Frank Robinson, you know, gets hired. Do you think that that formula can work in today's society because we've seen it. And history does repeat itself. Or do you think there has to be some new way of pushing this fight through from athlete activism?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so just on Jackie's point, I think that was at the World Series 1972 and he died like right after that. And then Frank Robinson becomes a manager in 1974. I think we only have like two black managers now, right? So there's not like this big shift that Jackie made there. But I think what we have to understand, I think Chris brings up this point, is that the athletes are second in the movement. And they're second in the movement just because, I mean, it's hard to be out in the movement, right? It's not easy to be in part of the Freedom Rise or the sit-ins. And so you don't see a lot of athletes getting involved until after that, right? We're talking about tens of thousands of people part of this protest, right? The sit-ins was like almost 70,000 people in 1960. George Floyd, we saw that post, you know, everyone's out in the street during COVID post-George Floyd, but we also saw what you were talking about. It's a revolt, right? NBA went on strike, WNBA went on strike, MLB went on strike. Everybody went on strike for like two days and then they got back to work, right? So it's really hard for them to process anything beyond that, dang, I gotta play, I gotta win this championship, right? But it is, what we know is that they do have a lot of power and we need them to use their platform, but they're always gonna come second. The other thing we talk about how everything's intertwined is that we spend so much on sports Even we stop to think of, we don't really think about like when we build a new arena or a new football stadium, like when the Vikings build that billion dollar stadium or someone builds that, how it impacts society, right? When we're using public dollars for private goods, we're talking about how everything's interconnected. If we don't use public dollars for these private stadiums, then what can we do when it comes to education or resources and stuff like that? So sport, athletes, society, it's so interconnected that we don't have enough time to talk about it. but, but one thing is clear is that when athletes do speak out, there are changes because we just, we celebrate them. We revere them in society. And so they do have power, but we can't wait. We can't wait for them to be for it first, right? They're always going to come after something. So when there's another movement, my bet is that you'll see more athletes involved on the front lines until that movement seems to be done.
SPEAKER_02:We got, Two minutes left. I'm going to ask you all for a 30 second answer equation. I'm going to come to you. Will athlete activism, particularly at the college level, will it be revived or will it go away?
SPEAKER_06:I want to say it's going to be revived. I think if we want empowered athletes, we have to build empowered systems. And so we need to think about whose voice are we going to protect and whose voice are we going to uplift? Because Without care, they have visibility, but without care, it's just strictly exploitation. So how can we move past performative measures to create systems and environments where they feel empowered enough to speak up and kind of use their voice to affect real change? So I think it's possible. I just think we need to do a job of building an environment that can support them in that way.
SPEAKER_02:Chris, I'll come to you. Will athlete activism, particularly at the college level, will it survive or will it be revived or will it go away?
SPEAKER_04:It's always going to be revived because athletes are part of society. And as long as society has existed, there's always been people who have wanted control and people who resist that control and say, no, we want to live our own lives. And athletes are no different than everyone else. We're human beings. So I think there will always be a place for athletes to speak out. And again, it just comes down to the individual courage. Does someone take up that baton and say, you know what, even though I don't particularly want to do this, it's my time to do it. I got to do it. And I think that's always gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02:Johanna, question to you.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, I have to be an optimist. Otherwise, well, I'm not always an optimist, but I feel like to keep myself going, I need to be, even though a lot of times I'm not. But I think the other, like, I think to build on what everyone else has said, like, I think... our current political state is just going to get worse and worse and worse. And so I think even if people don't feel that they are being oppressed as an athlete, I think they will see oppression in many other ways in their lives. And I think eventually it will hit them, which is sad. I don't want it to hit them enough to feel like they have to do something like, and I don't think any of us want that, right? But I think that is what it has to take. So I think regardless of whether it's like cuts to healthcare, cuts to basic education services, whatever, I think eventually it's going to touch as many... like many people to where it's just too much and they're going to have to do something about it.
SPEAKER_02:Lou, final word before you head to East Lansing. Man, I got to go
SPEAKER_03:pick up one of my kids from school first. Yeah, no, it's not going anywhere. But I wouldn't say it's not going to be every year, right? It's going to be a big movement. Maybe that push from the NCAA to take away some of that money, right? If they're talking about, well, if the administration say, hey, we're going to cap that NIL, my guess is that athletes will start to speak up for themselves. But also, as Joanna said, man, these are vibrant college communities. And I think you're going to start to see a little bit more protests on these college communities and the athletes won't be able to get away from that. I think they'll be part of it.
SPEAKER_02:Excellent. Well, listen, Equasia, Johanna, Chris, Lou, I truly appreciate the time. Dr. Shepard, thank you for putting this together, allowing us to speak. Andrew, thank you very much for putting this together, allowing us all to come together and talk. It's a very, very important discussion that we need to continue to have. And I will just say this. We have seen, as we said before, history has shown us that there are ways to overcome the fight and the struggle and the challenges that we're all facing. But I I think as somebody who is teaching students, as you all are teaching students, some of us have kids as well. It is important that we continue to educate them, to show them that there is a way to get through things. And when it comes to athletes, they need to understand that there have been great examples of successful people, successful athletes who have fought for change. And all it took was a little bit of courage and standing up and fighting for it. So it's important for us to remember that. I appreciate all of you. Thank you very much for your time and your great insight. And Andrew, I will turn it back over to you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Yusuf. And I'll just echo your comments. Thank you to all the panelists. That was a fantastic discussion and a great way to get our symposium started today. So really appreciate it and look forward to talking to all of you again here soon.