from rising up, don't pave the roads and it was just this constant reminder of the congolese sort of reality. .. dave zirin is author of many name, fool? sports and resistance in the united states," "game over: how politics has turned the sports world upside-down," and most recently, "jim brown: last man standing". >> "in depth," thanks for joining us.

how did this become a pseudo-national holiday? >> i'm so happy to be part of the alternative c-span program for super bowl sunday, the pregame show everyone is tuned into, they are tuning away from the networks and espn. i think you can't understand the growth of super bowl sunday as a national holiday without understanding the invention of the television set. before 1950, professional football is a secondary sport, wasn't something close to boxing or horse racing. it was in the background, didn't really play on radio. once television became part of people's homes, 1950, less than 10% of american homes had television, then it is 90% postwar boom, the growth of

technology, spreading of suburbanization, the television set and nfl fit inside that matrix. and the baltimore colts and new york giants ended in over time, and that became a remarkable event, the watercooler game everybody starts talking about and into the 1960s in green bay and vince lombardi and invention of the super bowl. and joe namath and the baltimore colts. after that super bowl iii, and in love with the new national holiday and worth pointing out, and facebook and social media,

and incredible focus on alternative medias. there is so much competition for people's eyeballs and the super bowl draws in more viewers. that is remarkable, whether it is the super bowl or hates the super bowl, people tuning in, and i can't understand either of the teams today and can't stand the new york patriots. in the boston area. and not a fan of this team. and that breaks the holy rule of sports and the los angeles rams, don't like that and it hurts communities. so despite that people tune in to watch commercials and the halftime show and all sorts of reasons and people hold parties for the purposes of watching

the commercials. that is a long answer to your question, that is where we are with the super bowl. i'm surprised they never moved the game to saturday or declared the monday after the super bowl a national holiday so people can recover. >> host: the development of homeland security declared this a national security event and sent the secret service down to this. >> guest: since 9/11 the whole tempera the super bowl has changed in a big way and becomes a national security event where a miniature version, i have written about this a great deal, you have to have debt, militarization of public space and displacement that takes place for the purposes of creating the security zone around the super bowl for the purposes of homeland security, it is seen as a target for terrorist

action but that in itself produces a tremendous weight on the shoulders of the communities and tremendous photojournalistic article in the new york times about the largely african-american neighborhoods that exist in the shadow of this year's super bowl address 80s benz stadium, the latest in the atlanta area and how these communities suffered in the shadow of the super bowl. a fascinating look at a substitute for urban policy in this country which is the hosting of these events and why there is such competition to host an event like the super bowl. >> host: you almost have to have the new stadium to host it. >> guest: in minnesota, a state we know very well, that in and of itself showed the ways in which you are able to get your city or state to pony up $1

billion, it will look on you with favor even if it means holding their annual prom for corporate sponsors in an environment. >> host: mercedes-benz stadium, did arthur block pay for it? or did the community -- >> hundreds of millions went into building the mercedes-benz stadium and arthur blank details the attempt to forge community programs in areas around the stadium, but churches were knocked down to build it, communities were displaced to build this stadium. you try to do philanthropic good work for the damage the stadium has caused, now there is fear the money invested in these neighborhoods will lead

to an outset of gentrification, and people will be forced out which is another feature of what happened when stadiums get built in neighborhoods if the areas around them become more high end and that makes a lot of folks have to be forced out. we have seen that in washington dc with the capital one center where the wizards and capitals play which used to be the verizon center. before that it was chinatown. now it is only chinatown in regards to the starbucks of chinese lettering underneath the names of big branded stores. now there are very few actual chinese-american people left in chinatown and it is because of the role gentrification plays when stadiums come into these neighborhoods. >> host: howard cosell, you talk about this in your book "game over: how politics has turned the sports world upside-down," said politics and

sports should not mix. >> guest: he said rule number one, sport and politics should not mix. howard cosell is very political as a person and he was talking specifically about the way the jockocracy would function, like frank gifford would be elevated to these heights as a former jock and so he was given a platform to speak out and he was saying this is a critic of the jockocracy and that if you want to talk about politics and his construct you would be isolated and iced out and find yourself without a place in this world so if you want to be someone who is a sports commentator, someone who is an act athlete who wants to be part of this world or even if you are current athlete who wants to use your nike platform to say something about the

world you will pay a price for that, that is the rule of the jockocracy and you are watching this game this year, the shadow of colin kaepernick, former san francisco 49ers quarterback who i would argue has been colluded against to because out of the national football league, his shadow looms so heavily over this game. i could explain how. he violated rule number one of the jockocracy about mixing sports and politics by protesting police violence and racial inequity during the national anthem by taking a knee and because he did that even though his last season he threw 16 touchdowns and only four interceptions he finds himself without a job in the nfl and every two years, the ongoing collusion case against the national football league but this year's game you had a ton of high end halftime acts

like rihanna, karty be, might be the first time he was mentioned on c-span, i'm a trailblazer in that regard. pink. all these artists refused to play at the halftime show out of solidarity with colin kaepernick and created this artistic picket line where it was very difficult for them to find musical acts who could come and play the halftime show which is a sub story. it has been such a story. i call it a subterranean story that isn't being talked about but it is such a big deal, the national football league canceled their annual press conference with the halftime acts because they rescued groups like maroon 5 would be pressured, why are you performing when so many artists say they are not going to do this in solidarity with colin kaepernick. >> nike in a sense is a good corporate citizen by taking

colin kaepernick on as a client and building an ad campaign around him. is that correct? >> it interesting. nike has taken part on madison avenue with woke advertising. if you appeal to people's social justice instincts and if they can identify a product with positive social justice attributes, people who believe colin kaepernick is pushing for a positive progressive agenda that can help the product itself and for nike we have seen this. it has proven to be very lucrative. people might remember when nike unveiled its colin kaepernick campaign there were predictions by the president of the united states whose name escapes me. the president of the united states said nike would sever to liberty -- terribly for this ad campaign. country music artists took stocks with the nike solution, cut them up and said this is going to be the future of nike

and the opposite took place. nike's earning shots through the roof because of the associationdurand, the most high profile stars of the national basketball association photographed themselves wearing the jersey. his shadow over this game, two years after he played in the national football league is substantial. >> host: if it is fair to say, dave zirin, that nike saw this is a moneymaker? >> guest: i certainly think so. nike doesn't do anything for free and doesn't take prisoners. i view it as a very canny attempt, something nike has

been doing for over 30 years. they take what is on the pop cultural edge, they take rebellion and strip it of its content. they were the people who brought in a person who at the time was a little-known independent filmmaker named spike lee to fill with michael jordan these incredible black and white ads about it has got to be the shoes. he says no, it has got to be the shoes. also an ad campaign with john mcenroe at the height of his tennis powers and the outline was rebel with a cause, never found out what he was rebuilding against, never found out what the cause was. this is not new for nike. this is the latest iteration. and they sell it to consumers. that being said, there is a positive ripple effect.

it showed a lot of athletes, may violate rule number one of the jockocracy, find yourself on the outside looking in. you are not going to be a commercial afterthought. even without league the damages the body. you can have your cake and eat it too. >> host: i want to show you the video from september 22, 2017, and get your reaction to this. >> wouldn't you love to see one of these nfl owners when somebody disrespects our flag, the get that sonofabitch off the field right now, he is fired, fired!

[cheers and applause] ♪ racism >> host: how do you see racism? >> guest: this is very clearly that speech was in rural alabama and it was clearly meant to do what this president does best which is demonize and divide people. you have a specific set of circumstances were almost entirely black nfl players taking a stance not against the military and not against the flag, they are so specific about that but taking a need to speak about the gap between what we are told the flag and this country represents and the lived reality of african-americans in the united states particularly in their interactions with the police. taking a knee is a long-standing political protest that dates back at least to doctor king and dates back in sports to 1959 when a track

runner named rose robinson, i will look that up in the break, in 1959, protesting the cold war, the nuclear buildup. this was nothing new. instead of doing what i argue a president would and should do witches engage intellectually with why people are taking this extraordinary step, instead he chose to demonize and divide. as we are doing this interview right now, the transcript of donald trump's face the nation interview has already been released and he is asked about this and interesting to see how his tune changed. he didn't say anything about slbs to face the nation or anything about they should be fired. he was asked about colin kaepernick and the protestants and we were able to pass prison reform which president obama was not able to do. immediately took it to this achievement about criminal justice reform and pivoting to

criticize president obama. i thought that was a remarkable pivot away from the kind of raw meat and potatoes, these are s obs and they should be fired for disrespecting the flag and disrespecting our military. instead, he was like we are trying to do criminal justice reform, a very different kind of answer. when he made thosees, in the same speech in the clip that you showed he also made comments about how the nfl has gotten soft and is not a serious physical league anymore for real men and all this sort of manly toxic masculinity stuff about how real men get hurt playing football in the league is trying to illuminate that. he was asked by face the nation how he would feel about his 12-year-old son playing football and he said it would cause tremendous concern.

those are two significant pivots on the political line on the nfl that took place and part of me wonders if this has to do with the 2018 election results, part of me wonders if it has to do with the fact that nike did not go down in flames when they embraced colin kaepernick. i don't know what the reasoning was behind this but the pivots to me are significant relative to the raw need and potatoes being served up before. >> host: dave zirin, your book "a people's history of sports in the united states," the subtitle is 250 years in politics in sports. >> guest: that is the thing. howard cosell called it will number one of the jockocracy, sports and politics don't mix, yet sports and politics have always mixed. it was one of the questions i ask people for fun. who was the first president to ever invite a sports team to the white house for a pr event? i ask you just for fun. >> guest: william mckinley. >> host: that is a great answer. william mckinley is a great answer.

often people say john kennedy or people say richard nixon knowing they were both big sportspeople or theater roosevelt because of his interest in sports. i say to folks the answer is actually johnson is not lyndon johnson, andrew johnson. goes back to 1866 where he invited a professional baseball team to the white house for a media opportunity. because johnson was very can only using baseball as a way to speak about the nation coming together in the wake of the freaking civil war. think about that. you had a civil war in the united states, thousands of people dead in the field of this country and there needed to be an effort to bring the country back together. and so baseball was seen as the way to do that by andrew johnson and seen as a way to do that by the people who promoted

baseball, albert spalding of spalding sporting-goods who made up this idea that a general named abner doubleday exempted baseball in cooperstown, new york. that is why the baseball hall of fame today is in cooperstown, new york. there is no record whatsoever that abner doubleday set foot in cooperstown, new york and no idea we have that he knew the difference between a baseball and a rattlesnake, yet after doubleday was put forward because he was a civil war general hero. this idea of associating baseball with war, which meant associating baseball with patriotism which meant associating baseball with the northern army in the coming together of the country following the civil war. >> host: we have seen a few sports teams say no to going to the white house after a championship during the trump administration. is this the first time this is

happen? >> guest: you had individuals refused to go to the white house over the years for political reasons, you had a goalie named tim thomas for the boston bruins who is on the right side of the political persuasion who wouldn't meet with president obama. you had different players during the bush years who would not go. one of the famous ones was in 1992 when you had craig hodges who did go to the white house, he showed up giving a letter to president george herbert walker bush outlying some of his issues with the state of the united states with regard to the war in iraq and race and race relations and it is like this is not a new thing of players attempting to not just merely be photo ops for the president but in the trump administration we've never seen anything like it.

they object quite explicitly and specifically to who is in the oval office. >> host: we interviewed craig hodges on booktv, that was not a career making move for him. >> a career ending move and he was one of several athletes in the 1990s. and a protester during the national anthem. they were drummed out of the league. people talk all the time about why is the nba more accepting of protesting athletes, the nba has its own legacy, finding themselves without a home precisely because they use their platform and speak about politics, they violated rule number one of the jockocracy. and the way players like colin

kaepernick, and the nba, they build their own personal brand around politics, and they are difficult to marginalize them. craig hodges was around today, or mock mood -- they would be so much from its surrounding their political situation it would be difficult to marginalize them and remove them from the sport. >> host: from a book you cowrote with michael bennett now with the philadelphia eagles, things -- "things that make white people uncomfortable". >> guest: he wanted to call it things that make white people and comfortable at dinner. >> host: here's a quote. that is what makes me so uncomfortable when people on the business accounting side of my life ask how are you building your personal brand? it rings so ugly in my ears

because a brand is a product. >> guest: michael bennett is one of the most extraordinarily and exceptional people i ever met in sports. the reason i did the book with him in the first place was he was michael bennett and i asked to work with him and i met him on stage in front of 750 people in seattle at seattle townhall and was asked if i could interview him publicly several years ago and that is where i met him, on stage. we vibe so well and i was so moved by what he had to say that afterwards he said i am thinking of doing a book, "things that make white people uncomfortable" at dinner, i said i don't know if we should do something with the title but i would be honored to work on this with you. when michael speaks about brands it rings so true because we are at a point that athletes are like corporations with legs

and they have a whole set of people that work for them is work with them, a person behind the person behind the person, it is easier to get to vito corleone then some athletes, you get the guy behind the guy behind the guy. a person who walks the streets and lives his life and is community activism, you don't have to get through people to get to him and he is trying to live an authentic life in an inauthentic world which is the world of professional sports. >> host: welcome to booktv on c-span2. this is our monthly "in depth" program, one author, 3 hours, and your calls. this month it is author and sportswriter dave zirin, the author of several books, the nation's sports editor and writer. here are his books. "what's my name, fool? sports and resistance in the united states" came out in 2005.

after that it was abca 14. mohammed ali handbook came out in 2007. "a people's history of sports in the united states" came out in 2008. "bad sports: how owners are ruining the games we love" was his neck book, that a co-authored book with the john carlos -- "the jon carlos story: the sports moment that changed the world" and some background to that as well. turned the sports world upside-down," "brazil's dance with the devil: the world cup, the olympics, and the fight for democracy" and then "things that make white people uncomfortable" co-authored with michael bennett and his most recent book just out last year, "jim brown: last man standing". we will talk about all those books, all the topics in those books we want to hear your voices as well. 202 syria, 748-8200. for those in the east and

central time zone, 202-748-8201. in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you can't get through on the phone lines but want to make a comment we have social media avenues for you. we will scroll through those. you see them on screen, remember@booktv is our handle for all of those. >> host: you mentioned one book, "bad sports: how owners are ruining the games we love," what is the opposite of inspired? i was expired to write that book by the dc area, seeing dan snyder, owner of the washington football team and the ways in which the two decades i lived in a town the way that football team went from being the sun around which all social life, not just sporting life evolved to being this sort of thing where people are tired of this team, people are exhausted with the owner of this team,

exhausted and seeing the way it hurt people i cared about in my barbershop, people around me and seeing the way consciousness grew around the name of the team and the way it was seen as a racist name, a slur and his inability to have any sensitivity towards that issue and that inspired me to write that book in particular. >> you do a whole chapter on dan snyder but you never said the word redskins. >> i have a radio show. and we don't say the name like burgundy and gold, the washington football team but you don't use the name itself. that is something we stand with proudly and i try to adhere to that. >> host: what has he done, dave zirin, to earn a full

in "game over: how politics has turned the sports world upside-down"? >> guest: there were cases of terrible pettiness like suing season-ticket holders who are unable to renew their tickets, bankrupting a woman, pat hill, which got a lot of publicity, locally in washington dc. the ineptitude of hiring and firing coaches, enforcing his will on the club, the amount he charges for the littlest things at the stadium, the chintzy way he operates the franchise, buying bags and bags of airline peanuts and attempting to pass them off as fresh to the fans. small indignities and big things as well. at present he is attempting to secure a ton of funds in real estate to move the team into washington dc including attempting to push legislation into the congressional budget

that was not able to be passed at the end of 2018 so when all these ways you have dan snyder as this person coupled with the ability to talk or meet with people in the native american community who object to the team name, it becomes a sort of thing where it is exhausting as a leading sports figure in the dc area. >> host: i have been in washington long enough to remember when everybody here 8, drank the team, the redskins and seems to have faded over the years. the franchise is still valuable. >> there is an expression about being an nfl owner that it is like being a bartender at spring break, you have to be utterly incompetent to not make money. the thing about this particular football team, when i moved here it was the most lucrative franchise, it was a national

brand. today is number 4 on the list of valued franchises with teams like the patriots and alice cowboys and nobody sees them as a national brand, not like the cowboys. if anything, they are whatever the negation of a national brand is. the philadelphia eagles, you might as well be in philadelphia, go to a steelers game in maryland you might as well be in pittsburgh. the opposing fans come out in full force and take over the stadium, nothing like it used to be at rfk stadium where the whole stadium was rocking with burgundy and gold, those days are done, dead as fried chicken. >> host: can the nfl fire and owner? >> the nfl cannot fire an owner. what they can do is force them out if the owner acts in a way that is seen as not being in the best interests of the

league. think about donald sterling, say racist things about magic johnson and that being an embarrassment to the nba, they forced him out. you can put the word forced quote, so the club for 21/$2 million and we should all be so lucky to be forced out in such a kind way. that is the way to have an owner leave if they do something so incredible embarrassing, being a terrible franchise owner is not enough to get you out of the league although if anybody would qualify it would be dan snyder. >> host: laura ingraham commented about basketball players and their political activism. >> fellow nba star kevin durant about what she described as trump's racist comments? >> the country, not run by a great coach, not a surprise

when he said something, not a surprise -- >> it is also scary -- >> shouldn't be numb to your behavior. >> i'm numb to this commentary like must they run their mouth like that? a lot of kids and some adults take these ignorant comments seriously. there might be a cautionary lesson in lebron for kids, this is what happens when you attempt to leave high school i year early to join the nba and it is always unwise to seek political advice from someone who gets paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball. lebron and kevin, you are great players but no one voted for you. millions elected trump to be there coach so keep the political commentary to yourself or as someone once said, shut up and dribble.

>> host: that was one year ago. >> guest: the backlash she received was so satisfying from my perspective. to me this idea of shut up and dribble you might as well say shut up and dance, shut up and sing, shut up and entertain. it is telling people that they need to be less than fully formed human beings who have thoughts and ideas and opinions about politics. it tries to push this idea that politics are just for people with bad haircuts on capitol hill and not necessarily something we all should have the right to speak on. in many respects what lebron james is talking about but has a bigger social media following than the president, lebron james is talking about connects with millions of people and whether we are talking about mohammed ali or john carlos, billie jean king, they are often able to be truth tellers in society and able to speak about issues that do in fact connect with tens of millions of people and that is why their

platform is policed so assiduously. i view laura ingraham as a media cop, police officer attempting to make sure players shut up and dribble. what lebron james did that was so ingenious as he took that vile phrase and turned it into an entire political theory he produced where he spoke about the history of politics and the national basketball association. it is brilliant and also i feel gratified about this but we are not the only people having these kinds of discussions about sports and politics, broken out into mainstream and that is why people like laura ingram are so panicked. it is a recognition of the influence they have. >> host: you have written also about the miami heat wearing hoodies. >> host: that was with lebron james and dwayne wade, back in

2011, that to me was the game changer when it came to sports and politics in the national basketball association so other players went on social media and this is the beginning of twitter at this phenomenon, so you see them going around traditional filters of media and producing viral photographs of players wearing hoodies and the way that influenced discussion about that particular case. that was really remarkable what took pl. trey von martin is from florida and this is an important point. there were dozens of walkouts in high schools in the miami area and around the trayvon martin's case and that is one of the things, we do contextualize in a way that is unhelpful. the way it works, protests

invariably start off the field and ricochet onto the field. mohammed ali for example did not create the antiwar movement, but these athletes can then influence what takes place off the field so there is this incredibly interesting boomerang effect from one end to the other where it is almost like a conversation between protests on the field and on the field and ways they grow over the course of this dialogue. >> host: why did you bring jim brown as the topic for your book? >> guest: i found the issue of jim brown, the person, fascinating. there has only been one other biography written about jim brown, a terrific book that came out a decade ago but if you look at how many biographies there are of mohammed ali, pages and pages

on your average bookseller's website but when you talk about jim brown, looking at jim brown's life, i was looking at somebody who is arguably the greatest football player in nfl history, somebody who made a little discussed contribution to the freedom struggle of the 1960s or he created the black economic unions which was an excellent -- interesting formation that i felt hadn't been explored. there was experience in hollywood in the 1970s where he starred in the black split 8 and era's most notorious films, and african tribe to make hollywood more a racially equal and balanced in terms of voices behind the camera and in the production area, the ability to do that, with richard pryor, i found fascinating, this work with gangs in the organization, which i found out, totally fascinating.

there's the issue of violence against women, part of the personal life over the course of decades so in looking at all this in total i always think this is a person who managed to be relevant and active over six decades and he has been in the news very recently and i was able to touch on this before was published, his support and interactions with donald trump and trying to be a voice in favor of donald trump and a voice inside the white house and this way in which jim brown is constantly restless and wanting to be not in the public eye but making some form of public impact i found really fascinating and something i wanted to write about and tackle. it is a difficult subject. i found jim brown is a polarizing person when you're

talking his support of trump or his personal life or his work in the 1960s, wherefrom doing research, he was critical of martin luther king and the idea of civil rights marches and protests, like he has been critical in recent years of john lewis, the civil rights veteran, as a member of congress, he refers to civil rights marches as parades, something jim brown has been doing for 60 years. you are talking about someone with a very consistent set of politics over the course of decades that are very controversial and polarizing. and be subject for a book. >> host: has america been a successful organization? >> guest: i would argue it is very successful. its ability, jim brown's ability to leverage his ability to reach at risk youth is something he should get all the praise in the world for. it is a remarkable set, what i try to do in the book is help

people understand his work with donald trump and his work with the black economic union and his work with american all reflect a conservative common theme, where you see change coming from which is not from the government, not from struggle, not from protest. i thought that was so important to write about because i know a lot of people, i write about this in the book, came out in support of donald trump, were shocked and appalled, this is not my jim brown. jim brown is a symbol of struggle and things of that nature. what i try to write in this book is actually this is jim brown and if you look back over the course of 60 years you will see this is somebody, these have been his politics over the course of half of the 20th century. >> host: this is video from trump tower, the summer 15th 2016. >> couldn't have been a better meeting.

the graciousness, the intelligence, the reception we got was fantastic. >> what specific policies did you talk about? >> if you talk about what we are really trying to do from the urban development and job creation is everything but talking about entrepreneurship, what it looks like from the individuals themselves and with the american camp program has done for many years is we have 40,000 former gang members and people who changed their lives, what we believe with the trump administration is if we can combine these powers of coming together, black and white is irrelevant, the bottom line is job creation and economic development in urban neighborhoods the change the theme of what our kids see. >> to reach african-americans during the campaign. is that appropriate? >> what i feel is he is wide open to helping change what

hasn't been changed. going back to $22 trillion since president johnson was around, you think about what that is, trillions we haven't addressed yet. before trump steps up there, i am going to do that, that will mean everything and that is why me and mister brown -- the election is over. we need to talk about going forward. >> have been listened to and we have a partnership. >> it is an extension of the outreach program you follow closely. mister trump made a commitment to improving the lives of african-americans in this country and this will continue the work we started during the campaign with the national

diversity coalition with ray lewis and it is enthusiastic, committed to doing it. >> host: dave zirin. >> guest: so much i can say about that i don't know where to begin. that was right after the election in 2016. first thing i would ask, where has the economic development been, where are the been programs, where are the things trump promised, he controlled congress for two years. what was the phrase he said? what do you have to lose? a lot of racial demagoguery the we discussed, sports has been used as a method of that racial demagoguery through comment about nfl players which made what jim brown did going there and ray lewis, the hall of fame linebacker next to him, seem like a betrayal to a lot of people in the nfl in the sports world particularly when you have athletes like steph curry and colin kaepernick standing up to donald trump and the

trump agenda. i don't have to go to the laundry list but when you have a president who was called out for unfair housing practices in the early 1970s, fast forward to what he has done is president and the comments he has made, this has been a place where racism has gone faster over the past few years and the growth of white nationalism and the clan in the street of this country. it has been a very difficult time the last couple years and so this question to jim brown about does he feel like the support is worth it, i know how jim brown would answer, he would say yes it has, that is all just propaganda, nonsense, what is important is having the ear of the president, i would disagree with that. >> host: did jim brown cooperating your autobiography? >> guest: i was able to go to his house and stay there for several days and he was generous with his time and i was able to interview him.

that is what we did. i was able to interview him. it wasn't the kind of thing where we were working in conjunction with one another and i spoke to him throughout the writing of the book but i was able to get several days with him and sit on his deck which was amazing, which oversaw the whole of los angeles in the west hollywood hills. the sort of thing where jim brown is a tough guy. he is a tough guy. he wasn't going to talk about anything he didn't want to talk about. i was just a writer trying to get what i could from him. most of the time, what he was talking about was trying to look back at his time in the world and look forward to what he saw coming in the future. what was interesting, he still had this kind of recklessness. i wasn't surprised when he came out for donald trump and was willing to make himself a lightning rod of controversy and criticized john lewis and went against the colin kaepernick push for social and

racial justice because he is always looking for that next fight and is not comfortable. keep in mind the cleveland cavaliers won the world championship in 2016 in the nba. the first team from cleveland to win a championship since 1964. the cavaliers brought jim brown to the stage, they had jim brown, and of jim brown wanted to he could be allotted and the rest of it and and and that is why pencils have erasers, and and violence against women in both of them willing to excuse them in each other to create a partnership. i'm not sure what the partnership is for other than promotion of kanye west,

political actor. >> host: dave zirin, in your book about jim brown is the quote, i am not saying the only reasons i've gotten in trouble with the police are that i am black and outspoken, though if you study american history those were two damn good reasons. >> guest: that is what jim brown and his defend is often said, particularly when problems with the police have intersected with the issue of violence against women, the idea that this is something that has only taken place because of being black and outspoken and i challenged that line of argument in the book because when you do that, he recently experiences of the people who have come forward particularly in the me too era of people having the truth be heard and not be drowned out because people will criticize you for trying to tear somebody like jim brown down. >> host: are you a sports fan?

do people enjoy watching sports with you? >> guest: that is a great question. one, yes. i am a sports fan. two, if anybody out there watching wants to watch sports with me i promise you you will have a good time. do i like talking about stuff that is not exit and dos when we watch sports? absolutely. i like to do a little dissection of commercials or politics, absolutely. do i like saying stuff like that player right there, i interviewed him, he has interesting things to say about sub-saharan africa. do i like doing that? i like doing that too. that feeds my enjoyment because i like looking at the players as individuals and not merely as laundry running up and down a field. i coach my son's basketball team. i'm involved on the level of more than just a critic. i like being immersed in it. we had a game yesterday, the dragons. we did very well.

>> host: i didn't expect that to be the last words out of your mouth. >> guest: my son hit a 3-pointer. >> host: i appreciate you helping me get back in rhythm. how do you get into this? >> guest: i got into this because it was my dream but i never thought it was possible. i was teaching school in washington dc, i was a third-grade teacher in my 20s and i was getting ready to get married and my wife to be who i'm still with, very happy to be with, you want to do this sportswriting thing it is now or never. we are going to start a family soon and be on the road to create a life here. this is the time to take the risks to figure it out so i called every newspaper in the maryland dc area and said i will do anything to work there

but in return i want a little space to write a sports column and they pay me whatever you have left over so my first job, the sort of thing where i made a few hundred dollars a week but had to sell a few hundred dollars a week in ads to make my salary but i was given that space to write a sports column and it was the best education i could ever have. i didn't go to journalism school. i learned how to write in newspapers and i'm absolutely indebted everyone that gave me a chance. >> what was the path from the first job and where was that to being the nation's sports editor? >> that was in st. mary's county in maryland. i worked for the prince george's post which is a black owned newspaper and i overheard my editor, floyd, speaking to a friend about politics and it turns out we had a lot of

shared political views about the world and i said i would like to make my sports column more political and he was very open to it and once i started writing it my brother in law who was into this newfangled thing called social media, he started putting my column out nationally on different lists. my brother-in-law, i'm very indebted to him and robert lipssite for the new york times, he started reading my stuff and i know you've been thinking of branching out into sports and i found your guy. >> host: you been with the nation ever since. >> robert has become a friend in the mentor and i have no word for that. >> host: did you go up as a sports rain? >> guest: i grew up in new york city a huge fan of the new york

knicks and the football giants. people like keith hernandez, huge posters, lawrence taylor, dwight gooden, i had no idea they had serious cocaine issues and i was a huge fan of sports and i memorized every statistic, reading the back of baseball cards. i never thought about the politics of sports until 1996, the decision not to come out and play the anthem. i interviewed him a couple years ago about colin kaepernick and you should do you change the course of my life by doing what you did and he was so gracious and so humble it was really remarkable. and so cool to interview him because even though i had been trying to interview him for 15

years because of the influence he had on my life and he never wanted to do an interview and after colin kaepernick started to make his standard made him more confident to speak out about his own experience and that is how i spoke to him. he said to me a setback is nothing but a set up for a comeback. >> host: you were able to recite the cincinnati reds lineup. >> guest: he loved that. >> host: he was watching horse raising, a guy coming up to him watching horse racing. >> guest: i interviewed pete rose before and found him to be disturbingly gregarious, he wanted to talk about everything, and any opportunity

to talk about it is beyond that. >> host: let's take some calls, glenn freeland from michigan, you're on with dave zirin. >> caller: thank you very much. i like the out pacino scarface reference but what i didn't like was ina trump voted, not a blind supporter but about trump and the black community, we had the lowest black unemployment rate ever in us history, trump signed the criminal justice reform bill applauded by people like van jones, the black environmental activist, he is pardoning black felons that obama never did.

jesse jackson, people applauded him for all he did for the black community for years and years before he became a republican. >> host: we got the point. dave zirin. >> guest: what i was talking about specifically were programs aimed at urban america. we've not seen infrastructure projects, the like of it and tremendous promises, to make that a reality, the low unemployment is a product of economic expansion that has been going on for years. that is the first thing. the second thing is, justice and criminal justice reform, this isn't about compare and contrast with president obama, but thousands of people at the grassroots level fighting for, justice reforms, putting extraordinary pressure on the federal government to do something about prison expansion, 3 strikes and you're out and the like. it is important to contextualize the climate of

these things taking place and jesse jackson would take issue for the fact that he supported donald trump as a friend to the african-american community. there are these awards trump won in the 1980s that are often trumpeted. people should look at the twitter feed of kevin cruz and what he does is unwraps and discusses where those awards come from and not necessarily that have to do with racial justice or racial reconciliation by any stretch of the imagination. >> emily from boulder, colorado. >> caller: i'm not a sports fan but i found out from an excellent documentary about larry do be, that he was the second person to break the color line in baseball. weiss and he mentioned more often? >> guest: he should be mentioned more often. a big shout out to boulder, colorado.

larry doby integrated the american league with the chicago white sox, the owner of the white sox, larry doby was an absolute trailblazer. he came to the scene in a short time after jackie robinson. the fact that jackie robinson has so much success with the dodgers winning the first rookie of the year award and mvp the following year and the dramatic arc of what jackie robinson went through playing for the brooklyn dodgers, and that has secured doby which it really shouldn't. we need larry doby films and books and education. the story is one that deserves to be held aloft. >> host: you write intensively about jackie robinson from the house un-american activities committee, was branch rickey a hero or was branch rickey -- was branch rickey a hero?

>> guest: it is similar to what we were talking about in regards to nike. he saw a moneymaking opportunity to integrate major league baseball and he also saw the country as having made a big shift with regard to world war ii, the number of african-american soldiers who fought and returned home, the desegregation of the army by harry s truman, all these things were coming together and he saw it as a moment to integrate major league baseball. the commissioner of major league baseball who upheld the, quote, gentlemen's agreement to keep the league white, he passed away and there was a new commissioner named chandler who said summit is good enough to fight for the united states they are good enough to play baseball, so he saw these factors coming together and started to look for a pattern. people should know there are a lot of people in the black community who were not happy

jackie robinson was the choice to integrate major league baseball, they thought it should be gibson or page, someone who held the negro league aloft and kept them together during along period of time. jackie robinson was seen as the top man out of ucla but also a veteran and branch rickey was looking for that type in jack roosevelt robinson. .. i think we need to take the blinders off for the conscious sports fan and i think we will be better sports fans for. it's important to look at what we like and don't like about sports and what we like and don't like about the individuals who play sports. we can challenge a sports to be better. it is something we have historically asked about her

cultural parts of our societyay whether music or film and you see these questions coming up a great deal now with the #metoo movement with regards to hollywood. we are demanding more and i don't think there's anything wrong with doing that especially when you factor in the fact that there are all modelsth, the fact you can talk without much better if firefighters and teachers were role models. it's just an objective fact, the old expression you don't have to believe in gravity to fall out of an air-- airplane. ito at the believe that sportse is a role model, but they are role models. host: who's your favorite team here or whoever plays against the new england patriots get this year it's tougher to find

someone to play for because the patriots are playing the la rams >> i mentioned this earlier and i have a tough time rooting for the new england patriots and let me say this before the entire weight of massachusetts, new hampshire, maine and rhode island and half of connecticut, before that falls on my shoulders let me say it's difficult to not have an incredible amount of respect for the patriots , i mean, 133 afc championship games in the 17 years and this is a league built to create parity, a league that is brilliantly constructed through salary constraints and scheduling, so a team that was terrible one year could be great the next year so unlike with baseball you go into every season with hope that you have a super bowl contender in your hometown unless you live in washington-- sorry, had to throw that in there. somehow it dennis snyder has snyder has managed to beat the purity rule and bill belichick and tom brady the quarterback has been

able to defeat the roles of parityra and make these 13 championship games in 17 years and this will be their ninth super bowl today. brady will either go six and three or five and four, but either way nine super bowl's in a when just going to one is an incredible accomplishment. it's's remarkable. with that said i'm from new york city , and i cannot get over the fact that they are massachusetts team and their success absolutely torments and tortures me , so that's where i am with the new england patriots took other thing-- people will say things like that they cheated, deflated the ball, filming opposing teams. i don't take that seriously, i mean, partly because i think every team in the nfl and it is is my experience and i can talk about it more often year, but a lot of them look for edges in all kinds of interesting ways when you play in the national football league. even amongst the

competitive-- most competitive people on earth and so whoever the patriots-- whatever the patriots did or did not do i would say they did it better than other teams to get ahead and the la rams are top for me to root for because the way they left st. louis was very difficult thing to swallow. there-- there are currently four lawsuits taking place with how they let the city to the city will pay for the stadium in st. louis until i believe 2021. of the city offered them $500 million of public money, which was turned down by the owner of the team, standard cranky and the thing about standard cranky is his given name is edith stanley cranky named after edith slaughter and stand usual, the two greatest stars in the history of the st. louis cardinals because he was born in columbia, missouri, so the idea that this son of st. louis named after the great cardinal-- cardinal would abuse the city in such a way and go to california, my dad

is from brooklyn and it summed up the memories of stories i heard growing up about the way the dodgers left for los angeles and the older jokes about walter o'malley, the owner of the dodgers that are a little off-color, perhaps, for c-span, but enough or are told i knew growing up that abandoning your hometown for la is the act of a traitorous act in the spores land scheme, so difficult to root for the rams, difficult to root for the patriots. on going to report it-- good commercials and good food. host: those of us old enough to remember it was the la rams long before st. louis. guest: cleveland rams before that so started in cleveland, they leave for, but they had been in st. louis for a good 20 years, 22 years and in that time they had won a super bowl, had been to this to super bowl's ma certainly made a home for

themselves in st. louis. it also hurts because st. louis is a really serious intense sports town and in los angeles, i mean, there have been a lot of news reports about this, people are only barely aware their team is in the super bowl, i mean, there's a lot to do in los angeles and los angeles is a plate that for years until the rams and chargers came in the last couple of years from san diego to la they didn't have a team. second largest media market in the country, the country's most popular sport didn't have a team in los angeles and now they have to and there is no evidence that people have necessarily noticed host: why did you say we would have to talk off air about some of the edges that these top 1% of athletes have taken? guest: because i think that when you talk about these teams whether talking about the medicine they shoot themselves up with so they can get onto the field, the sacrifices made to their physical bodies so they can get on the field and what to

teams are due to actually find out what other teams are doing so they can prepare the proper game plan, i mean, there's a reason why the coaches when you see them on television are always talking to each other le with the clipboard over their faces, because they are scared of lip readerscl and so not just this paranoia doesn't exist in a vacuum. it exists because there is a great deal oft competitiveness and willingness to win at all costs and vince lombardi even though a lot of the quotes contributed to lombardi we are not sure he said, but this idea that winning isn't everything, it's the only thing and this ego that says the end hat-- can justify any means what it comes to winning a football game, which also relating to something we talked isn'tbefore necessarily the healthiest thing to model. host: is there ever a good reason for a city to build a stadium for a private sports

owner? guest: i have debated this a and ideal with folks think we have moved beyond the point where it's a question of opinion because we have so much data-- it's like now we're at the point where we are debating if the sky is blue because we has so much at this point and there's been so many studies at this point that show that building a stadium in the public money is just not an effective use of public money, i mean, one of the most famous quotes about it is that you are better off dropping a billion dollars from an airplane and just letting it land in the streets and having people pick it up and use it in stores, that is a better use of a billion dollars in public money than actually building a stadium and it makes sense when you think about it because you got a think aboute nfl stadium, how many days he year is it "x, i mean, in less you are talking about playoff games eight games he a year, maybe some concerts or other events during the year, but what happens to the neighborhoods around the stadiu when there aren't games, the

various bars and restaurants? is like they are like ghost towns any people should do that sometime, go to the neighborhoodsds of your nfl stadiumss when there is not a game day and just walk around. c what the atmosphere around it is like, i mean, there might as well be big bales of hay floating through the streets. this is where we are and the jobs created 10 to be nonunion, low income and a seasonal work and so there are better ways to spend money and then there is the basic moral fact that you are giving a billionaire a billion dollars and 500 million to a billion dollars of public money to build a stadium instead of them building their own stadium. host: next call for dave zirin comes from margate in fayetteville, arkansas. caller: hello, good morning, good afternoon. guest: hello, margaret.

caller: i have a comment any question. my comment is first of all this blame injury similar to boxing in football and boxing areil forms of human sacrifice despite these facts it's lavished on football in junior high and high school and college. of the coaches make a living and frequently of they rich sacrifices of their players. the players get very little, frequently nothing beginning in the sixth grade boys come to believe they will become rich pro football players, though these boys begin neglecting their academic studies to devote more time to football. they get very far behindot in their academics and the truth is it's more likely an easier for a boy to become a doctor than a professional

football player partly because of the limited number of job openings in professional footballen host: margaret, let's get a response to those statements from dave zirin. guest: i had to say first and foremost the change in how people look at football in terms of the physical toll it takes on players can be seen in the fact thaton it was a call from margae from fayetteville, arkansas. host: home of the university of kaarkansas. guest: yes, and also southeastern conference country, i mean, this is where football is often times at its most intense and we hear from margaret and margaret i think is the voice of a growing course of people who are starting to ask this question about whether football is something that will exist into the next generation whisor two and football for allf its economic success to be talked about at the start of the show is also something that operates currently with this great existential fear that it

may go the way of boxing, the way boxing used it to be the number one sports in the united states and people still get up for a big fight, but it's less and less, this kind of cultural phenomenon that people know the rankings and discuss it over the water cooler. football has a changed and it's changing because science is not football's friend, so the more we learn the more scientific stats we get mean the fact that you had donald trump today on television talking about her doesn't want his son to way football when he's criticized the nfl for being too soft and itcriticized president obama for saying something similar to mean these are important data points we should keep track of as the cultural wheel turns. a great journalist once a set people in the press, the media's better at covering revolution in evolution and i think that is true there's no revolution against football taking place, but there is an evolution. host: tony, tweets a lot of the

discussion so far has focused on male athletes t. can dave speak more about women athletes in the way their contributions are often marginalized the we talk aboutwoat politics? guest: great question, tony. i write a great deal about female athletes in both historically and in the present and i think what you see with women athletes i think there is a really interesting historical continuum where it's a social question often times the role and placement of female athletes in the broader society and so when women in general are part of social movements for women's right to particular decade you see the elevation of women athletes and when those same athletes are pushed backwards nec sports pushed backwards as well, i mean, you see that in the 1920s where you have the emergence of post

suffrage movements and you also seest the fact that some of the most celebrated athletes in the country were women in 1920s, swimmers like gertrude, athletes like mildred richardson, these were different kind of era. you saw women in the 1940s when they were entering the factories and how they were able to also start the all-american professional girls baseball league and then in the 1950s he saw the way women were pushed off the field with the backlash against women o generally in the 1950s and then you cannot separate the women's liberation movement in the late 60s and 70s without speaking about the rise of a people like billie jean kingg and also wyoming highest of the greatest track start of the 60s who is one of the founding members of the women's sports foundation absolute legend who gets forgotten, but it's important for us to know this history. i've mentioned rose robinson earlier, the women who didn't stand for the anthony 1959. some people speak about her, there's a terrific

scholar who has done terrific work on this but when you talk about the general sports oxygen, it's not discussed in the way it should be and this needs to change i think todayul as we have seen a lot of athletes particularly the incredibly heroic women with usa gymnasticscs who have come forward and influenced by the metoomn movement to e eak out against sexual abuse in usa gymnastics, i mean, you see the way-- you cannot separate what happens off the field with what happens on the field and the tremendous athletic, this meant usually accompanied the commish retsina push board for women's rights in general. host: dave zirin, and people's history you write rather extensively about a woman named althea gibson. guest: absolutely. host: who was she? guest: a great tennis player. host: fiftys? guest: 1950s and really a trailblazer in every regard in the sport and someone recognized

by serena williams and venus williams as the great african-american trailblazer she was.re o what makes are also very interesting is that she's someone who believed unlike jackie robinson that her plate itselfwh was a political statement like jackie robinson believed-- he would often speak about jackie robinson like compare and contrast mode because she was referred to as the jackie robinson of her sports, but she believed that her play could do the talking for her and of the mere very restricteddo willie white world of tennis her succeeding that in and of itself was a political statement and that had a lot of influence on my thinking when i read about as he again saidot because it made me relay she really have these two kinds of political acts. you have the ones who are extremely like representatives, just the mere fact they are on the field is a political act and then you have the ones who

are then use their platform to speak out about politics and in althea gibson and one of the great representative athletes who ever lived and someone like jackie robinson you have someone representative and explicit in terms of him being willing to speak out about politics particularly after his retirement as well as someone who when he took the field made a profound political statemente . host: from game over growing up in new york city i was a mets fan down to the marrow of my bones. guest: sure was. host: that's why for countless fans and me this story has been painful like no other, the ugly truth has been unveiled, the mets want my team or new york city's team, they were bernie made as a team. guest: i mean, them mets have been in financial problems for years which is just bizarre being a new york team that plays in a publicly funded stadium named after a bank playing in a city field as they are and yet

the owners of the team, the wilpon's they had a ton of money stolen by bernie made off and it's made the running of the team on a week to week basis incredibly difficult and on a year-to-year basis and even when they have been able to develop incredible talent like they have in recent years that talent find itself eventuallyt sold by the pound, so that's been a very difficult process to remain a mets fan in the context of a team that you feel like use public money, the money that went to build city field of the profits from that and investor with bernie madoff and then dissipated, so you never liked the idea of your team being used as a money laundering operation. that's particularly public money and that makes it difficult to root for the team and this is where i think maybe it relates to what we were talking about earlier about is it difficult to be a sports fan in this climateto

because sometimes it is difficult when you learn aboutsp the way a team actually runs, when you see how the sausage is made, if you will. i think it's so to focus on the art of the play because there is arts in sports and there is something beautiful about seeing athletes, male, female what have you out there on the field, i mean, i get so much out of watching diane atrocity. i'm a big wnba fan and i love to go to those games because one of the things it reminds me of his why i fell in love with sports in the first place. host: title ix, has that been a success? 20000 people will attend a male basketball game in the ncaa, 1700 will attend a women's, but the purity, the money is therefore both. guest: it depends on where you go, i mean, you go to yukon. host: it will sell out. guest: it will sell out in a rabid environment. title ix has been a

profound success and it's difficult to even come up with pieces of legislation that exceed title ix in terms of the actual impact it had on the number of people, that is had the impact on the signed into law by richard nixon and to that in and of itself i think is a lesson unto itself because it showed the way that public pressure and movement of the context in which title ix was able to become law in the lot-- i'm sure folks know this, but if they don't they should know title ix's language doesn't even say anything about sports or quit its is equal opportunity and equal funding in places that receive government funding and there needs to be equal opportunity for many women, but it's just in the sports world aware that the most incredible effects. the last statistics i saw that roughly one out of three girls play sports and before that-- before title ix heavily there was one out of 29

and young girls who play sports i mean there are so many positive things that come out of that whether you are talking about socially, mental healthea, whether you are talking about their physical health and these opportunities would not be there without title ix and just when you thinkwo of the tens of millions of young women that it has affected and i think it has also changed the wayay young men see women as well and i think that's really important because when we talk about fighting sexism that first and foremost is not a discussion with women, it's a discussion with men and sports is often timesme the yardstick in our society for how we understand the question of equal the edit has been since the foundation of organized sports. that's why i talked before about women's sports being a social question number when you think about the ways in which sports started, it started with this mythology of a level playing field yet women are many people of color were denied a place on that field and so any time you had a push to

actually find a place on that field it both expose the playing field as not level and it pushed to make it even more levelve in a morality play that was public for the world and the public to see. host: williamson fredericks erred, virginia, you are on with author dave zirin. caller: certainly appreciate c-span. it's a terrific resource for all of us . last season i became transfixed by lay beyond the bell, the running back for the pittsburgh steelers, absolute deity on the field. a do you have any insights or information as to why he did not report this year? there seems to be an issue or issues therean that go beyond his mere personal contract? caller: yeah, i think it connects with the discussion we were having before about what we know about physical health of

the ballplayers. bell is a running backe for folks that don't know pittsburgh steelers, equally adept to catching the ball in the backfield as his running and bell made a decision to just not report this year. he will be a free agent going into the off-season and in turn a lot of-- he turned a lot of money down i believe in $900,000 a weekg because he believes he's going to get more money on the free agent market coming out of this year and he didn't want to risk getting hurt this year. that kind of business decision is something that's been unheard of in the nfl until now, but what i'm finding out when i talk to players and in articles i that there is so much more in this right now and the willingness to resist public and organizational pressure because people feel like this is my one shot, this is what i make 99% of the money i will make in my entire night-- life in the average careers only three years , so he made a business decision to sit out for years and test

free agency and we will find out if he was intelligent or not. one thing is for sure that if no other team will the new york jets are always willing to spend a lot of money for whether they have the ability to play or not, so there's always the jets. host: 2009 sports illustrated .rticle estimated 75% of the ballplayers out of the league and a 60% of nba players in the league are either bankrupt or in financial straits. guest: those numbers don't surprise me because there is so little financial educational. it's actually gotten better because now they do it with the ricky, the ricky transitional program where the ricky comes into the league and people seek to them who are financial experts who speak to them about how to put money aside and speak to them about the importance of savingo , but for a lot of players that kind of financial literacy doesn't exist and for myself that 19, 20, 21 folks should ask themselves what was your level of financial

literacy of your-- at your agent would have made a difference of yet hundred dollars million dollars, i mean, i got in trouble in college for balancing trick checks and i was writing for dollar checks to buy sub sandwiches and i didn't even realize i was writing checks that were beyond my account. if i was doing that with $4, i would have done that with $400,000fo and it would be a car instead of a sub sandwich, so it doesn't surprise me. i think the league and the union's have taken steps to make sure the numbers down in the future, but it's pretty harrowing when you meet players and i have met players particularly at these ricky transitional like these players who are heroes they come and say like you have all heard of me and you saw my all-star games and i now have no money. they just get in front of them and tell them their stories and you can hear a pin drop in the room when they do that.oror host: what you think about one and done in the ncaa?

i guess i'm thinking of these athletes who started young, seven, eight grade and were targeted by teams or by sports and their whole lives have been just about themselves and just about their three-pointer or their ability to runr and all of a sudden r it's always been about then okay i'm done. guest: it's amazing like the amount of blinders one has to have, first of all to even just go to that level, but then the one and done program one thing that exposes is the ways in which our institutions of higher learning are just the minor leagues for the national basketball association and so i think that to take a step back and ask ourselves, do we approve of that as a starting point, so i don't think there should be a one and done cruel trick if you are 18 years old and old enough to fight in a war and old enough to drive a car and old enough to

do the same thing youin should e old enough to get aou job and py in the national basketball association. with the nba wants is for these players to play a year and brand themselves to a college and audiences so there's more excitement when they come into the league and they are more developed physically and lvmentally, they think, to play in the league, but as a rule it doesn't seem very just ordo even constitutional if you think about it and this idea we are going to constrain your ability to make a living because of the fix we have in with ncaa stew and next call is joseph, go ahead, joseph. caller: hello. i'm a fan of the mets. i saw the that that giant stadium, playing against the giants, but anyway, used to play in high school.

i was the last year when it was all lights and i had a friend of mine and he was just-- he had such a high iq in the game. i had iq high iq admitted as a freshman, but here's the thingng, do you know-- you are in politics, every game has these rules you have to follow the rules. with a democracy you have to follow the rules , but for some reason, you know, i'm not a harvard graduate, but these people you know i have 100 times more than i would ever need, but look i'm helping a, nine people; right? but do you know and the captain of my basketball m team was bobby, i saw

like a part of him i was working downtown, he was a broker-- a. host: i apologize. a little off track here, but not sure where he was going three to i would love to have a beer with him. sounds like he has some amazing storiesg.. he said one thing that id really want to pull out of that, which is i think one of the reasons why we are so attracted to sportse is because there are supposed to be rules. there are supposed to be rules in politics, and society, but often times we see those rules flaunted framework-- flagrantly and no one pays a price for thatfl and at least in sports between the lines there are a set ofe rules that make sense. it's why cheating makes people so upset in the world of sports. it's why steroids in baseball makes so-- people so upset and i did that p that against his and games they people so upset and idea of tom brady deflating footballs made people so

upset. it's because you want to feel that at the very least this could be one space where rules are respected and everything's aboveboard and on the level p. host: richard, massachusetts, good afternoon>>. caller: good afternoon. david, i know so many people that like donald trump. recently he had an interview on fox news and he said trump is working very hard to serve the best in the country and he went on to-- [inaudible] my question is these interviewers never follow up, but what is it about him that you think he's doing so well taking little children away from his parents?

yelling and screaming, so you know also before i forget you probably saw that jackie robinson , in the "new his times" recently horror his whole life or less-- host: richard, thank you. .. i think what you mentioned at the start is what we have to keep in mind. as much as pro sports owners like to brand themselves with their team these teams were hours before it was ever there is. you don't have to love bob kraft. that would have been shocking this didn't happen on fox and friends but would have been a

great follow-up question to ask, in what ways is the president working in the best interest of our country, gives them concrete examples was he was be as flummoxed as i would be. >> host: you say the team belongs to us, not the owners. is there an owner you think is a good job? >> guest: i love the owner of the green bay packers because there are several hundred thousand of them. >> guest: >> host: how does that work? >> guest: they are community owned team. i you get for buying shares in the packers is a piece of paper that says you are a shareholder. you get no dividends, no stock. you just get the satisfaction that you are somebody who owns a piece of the team and by owning a piece of the team, one thing you are guaranteeing is two things which are very important, the first is they are not going to move, unlike the cleveland/los angeles rams. that you get more than that.

you know publicly, public hill isn't going to get hosed for things like stadium improvements or roads. they sell more stock and more people get to own pieces of the team. it is almost like this accident of community solidarity to keep the packers in green bay. it is written into the nfl dialogue that no other team is allowed to be owned in this way. it was grandfathered in from when the nfl was a rinky-dink small operation and they were trying to think of a way to keep the team in green bay. >> host: there has to be a thing, and make decisions too. who are those they? >> guest: they is the vast apparatus that runs the team but they visit green bay, there is an apparatus at the top, an executive group that makes these decisions and certainly

there are greater and lesser evil of owners out there. they don't rely on public funds, that makes a good owner. the other thing, jerry jones of the dallas cowboys is somebody who doesn't think because they own a team they have unique insight. and they just leave them alone. and if jerry jones, bill belichick would have lasted 3 or 4 years not unlike jimmy johnson, another incredible thinker, able to win two super bowl's and him and jerry jones went kaputski. >> host: gillette stadium,

wrigley field, what do you think of the corporation, the corporate nest of naming stadiums and getting advertising inside, something that happened with soccer, even nba. >> guest: they were the logos. this is not anything new. back when people would go to brooklyn dodgers games, brooklyn, when a free suit. there is always advertising in the stadium, a recognition of how it has become big business. corporate naming rights are a part of free advertising so when you talk about american airlines arena you talk about american airlines arena. one thing about it is most stadium contracts, that money goes directly into ownership like the selling of naming rights and that has always been

bothersome to me when you consider how much public money goes to funding the stadium. let the public have that money as well for roads, schools or libraries. >> host: let's hear from ethan in tempe, arizona. are you with us? not there. let's hear from stephen in massachusetts. stephen? >> caller: great show. so many questions which i got to say in the 60s when i was a teenager i was a huge baseball fan of the white sox and cubs, one of those rare curses, i rooted for both teams. i looked at baseball players as almost godlike. in the late 60s this guy came out with a book called ball 4 and instead of turning me off

from the sport it made me see the players and teams in a more realistic view. i wondered your pick on that. >> guest: steve from stoneham is talking about ball 4, about the 1969 season he spent with the team that no longer exists, the seattle islands. when jim wrote this book it was the ultimate violation of what we talked about at the top of the show, the rule of the jockocracy that sports and politics don't mix. what he did which was an incredible political act, he ripped away the curtain and talked about what players do when they are bored and how players meet women on the road. all these things you read the book now and it is almost quaint in terms of what players did and lived their lives, sweet when you read it now, a sweet look at a bike on era but

jim found himself harassed out of the sport. pete rose who we spoke about earlier got out of the dugout and cursed him out, derisively called him shakespeare which is a big insult for pete rose. i truly love this book. if someone asks me can you read 5 books written -- ball four by jim boutin is at the top of the list, a classic. the one thing he wrote after that, like a ball 5, ball 6, get into his life or family, he would do updates about them. i don't know about the families but i have been doing a couple of those, just a terrific human being. >> host: jerry in cherry valley, illinois. >> caller: i want to piggyback on the last call because i was a white sox fan too and i

remember when many mendoza had to take a street call -- streetcar to the south side to play and i have a correction and the question. >> guest: go ahead. >> caller: i know you are knowledgeable, dave, but larry dob came in with the cleveland indians. >> caller: he was -- bill bass was the owner than. >> guest: that was my fault. apologies. please. >> caller: i bring it up because it is so important. >> guest: that was the case, i absolutely know the cleveland indians, i am very red-faced right now. >> caller: the question is i am a big hockey fan and i say in the nhl, maybe one person on the team of african-american dissent are none.

what is going on? >> host: washington capitals. we 15 there is a history of collusion and racism in hockey which needs to be addressed. one thing we know about sports, young people have access, they play so it becomes a question of access and becomes a question of player development and reaching out and not having this exclusionary system. i appreciate the caller very much for bringing that up. my goodness. i did say larry doby played for the white sox ridiculous air on my part, and unforced error. >> host: i'm glad he is listening a new that right away. you talk about your favorite books, we ask the authors what favorite books are and the top of the list is redemption song, mohammed ali and the spirit of the 1960s. >> guest: i mentioned before

when he made his stance in 1996 but made me want to ask for the intersection of sports and politics but it was retention's song that made me want to become a sportswriter. he writes about the political industry of mohammed ali in a way that has so much nuance and excitement that i'm reading this and thinking why can't sportswriting be like this? why can't it be political? why can't you talk about what is being said off the fuel are inside the ring and how it influenced what happened inside the ring? the way he told that story made me once to become a sportswriter and direct them into people all the time, say to me what one sports book i should read, i always say don't read mine. read redemption song. >> host: the other 3 books you sent and were not sports books. song of solomon, fear and

loathing on the campaign trail. >> guest: fear and loathing on the campaign trail, my friend set i want to go into journalism, read this book and read it twice and give you an idea what journalism should look like and sound like. fear and loathing on the campaign trail had this impact. it was fun when i read something with a greater purpose in mind. when you say i'm going to figure out not just be entertained or be a consumer of what i am reading but the art of how is being written and that is how it affected me strongly. and i love potboiler's, i love historical fiction, give me -- i read it 3 times and song of solomon by toni morrison, just

the greatest fiction writer to ever walk the earth. nobody does the final line of a book or final paragraph better than toni morrison. that keeps me reading her books and recommending them to others and i'm having trouble getting through, beloved or having trouble getting through the blue i. i say to them keep reading because that paragraph will knock you on your behind. >> host: currently reading football for a buck, the crazy ride and crazier demise of the jeff probe. >> he wrote about the mets for the 1980s, the bad guys won. anytime jeff pearlman writes a book, he's an interesting writer and then he writes with the kind of verb and excitement that bring sports alive.

i grew up a fan of this ragtag football league impossible in the spring with team names and memphis showboat and pittsburgh maulers, new jersey generals, this is fun for me. >> host: does donald trump have a hand in this? >> guest: that is part of the story, donald trump brought the league down, and he was the owner of new jersey generals, donald trump as the book outlines cajoled the league from being spring football from taking on the nfl in the fall. the argument was donald trump was hoping to get the leak to the adult to take in the team and donald trump would be the owner of the nfl team which was his goal the entire time and that blowup in her face and it

was a wild story. >> host: colorado geezer tweets in u, to turn down a winter olympics 1976. talk about what the olympics due to cities when they get the bed. >> shot out of the people of boston who pushed back as summer did. i spoke about this in the super bowl applying to the olympics of debt displacement and militarization of public space. this has been a feature of every olympic game is a reason city after city today across the world have been voting in referendum and trying to keep the olympics out of their hometown. in the post 9/11 era, the weight of hosting these games is destructive toward the city, not constructive. in brazil if you know what is

happening in brazil in terms of its political and economic turmoil you can't separate that from the fact it made the decision when economic times were good of hosting the world cup in 2014 and the limbic in 2016 back-to-back and i wrote a book about that, brazil stand with the devil and the devil in that case, these mega events, the devil is the world cup this operation that pushes a sporting shock doctrine in the words of naomi klein where sporting events come into a country and play a role in remaking the economic priorities but wrapped in sports, they are pushed through. >>, what has been the effect. and everything going into the city every oh.

and it destroyed entire neighborhoods. and it created a situation where a lot of public services people were counting on were underfunded and created a situation where these mega events were branded with the ruling workers party and open space for this new far right leader to take leader and they are not talking about this with the radicals. a very scary figure in many respects for how he speaks about women and gay people and what he wants to do to the amazon rain forest and indigenous people, and indigenous protest at the embassy in washington dc and the political analyses, nothing about the ways the world cup and the other pics paved this road for him to take power

because it bred so much anger and dissatisfaction. in 2013 before the world cup mass marches were taking place on the stadium that they were being built, brazilians protesting soccer by the thousands. like new yorkers protesting pizza. you would never see that. >> host: 1968, mexico city. san carlos did not just come out of the back human. >> it was a movement, the lipid project this movement was built for the liberation of black athletes, built as a way to organize not just a protest but boycott of the olympic games and doing so around a series of demands like this inviting

south africa, rhodesia, from the olympics like giving avery brundage, his nickname was slavery avery, getting him to step down for what were perceived as his racism as far from the international olympic committee. it was built around a series of demands. when the boycotts didn't happen, tommy smith and john carlos felt they needed to do something to commemorate the struggle in october 1968, summer olympics were not in october that year, a lot had taken it back by then. in october 1968, they are not just raising their fists with gloves on each hand but not wearing shoes to protest poverty. they were wearing beads around their neck as a symbol of violence and lynching in the united states and wearing buttons that said olympic projects for human rights and

in the silver metal stand, peter norman was wearing a button that said olympic project for human rights. a tremendous show of solidarity and image that stood the test of time, that and mohammed ali are the two most famous sports photos of the 20th century. >> host: the john carlos -- "the jon carlos story: the sports moment that changed the world" co-authored by dave zirin. we covered mister carlos in 2011 on booktv talking about his book. here is a little bit of what he had to say. >> i grew upstairs and knocked on the door. a guy comes to the door and opened the door and looked at me and invited me in, offered me cookies, soda and some of these people look familiar.

and not putting dots together, and 25 minutes later a living legend walked out, and there needs to be a bug on my lapel, doctor king walked out of my room. a little johnny carlos is in the room with doctor king. i realized right away not only was he a civil activist but a minister. if he wanted to be on saturday night live standing up as a comic, he knew how to crack jokes and relax the people and he sure relaxed me, shaking a little bit. i am in there with the big boys.

and to support the olympic boycott, second-in-command under harry edwards. and we had a strategy what we were doing and how we were doing it and he says out of nowhere, the letter said a bullet with his name on it and doesn't have to wait long. that is like bringing a big gun. i couldn't wait to put my hand up. did you play basketball? did you box? did you run? he said i couldn't play anything. why would you get involved in the movement? imagine a boat in the middle of a lake? you take this and hold it over the side and drop it, what

happens? you get vibrations. is that rock? he said if you chose to step back from the olympic games, the greatest thing is you are not telling anybody, not putting anybody down, as a man as a woman, i am choosing to step back, and imagine what would have happened if black soldiers stepped back, did you think america would be as great as it is today. you had another question, yes, i have another question. you said they have a letter with a bullet that has your name on it, why would you go back to memphis? when he said what he was about to say i used to wear shades.

i put my shades down. i want to look in his eyes and don't want to look through glass. why do you think so? if a man told me they were going to kill me, why are they shaky? he was afraid to die, solid as the rock of gibraltar. when you look at someone's eyes, you know when love is in their eyes. he loves society so much until he was ready to give his life. when you look at a picture of gandhi, or rosa parks, the same or paul robison and my hero john brown, when you look in his eyes you see the same love. these individuals made the ultimate commitment. they didn't make a partial commitment. john collins did not make a partial commitment in 1968.

my day is done. my day is not done because the war we started years ago, long time before 68 still goes on today. 1968. [applause] >> i tell you guys about that applause in a minute. they have a time schedule so we have to keep up with it. 1968 when you sit back, we were young and idealistic and how can we make society better and all those individuals died and they stepped out to move, and doctor king died, gandhi died, rosa parks, all of them died,

markham died. let's get these young individuals together and make some understand. for any young individual, and willing to discuss it. and training too hard. we said look, man, we tell you what you can do in 15 minutes.

i'm willing to do that. we got on a hypothetical train and rolling down the tracks. god bless america, russia, cuba, bring home the gold. we are going to do this thing and make this olympic boycott possible. we are going to make society better. just like you are facing a crossroads. now the day when we are on the same page and come together as a unit. let's stop the train and tend to olympic boycott a black athletes or anyone sympathetic to the cause. it goes all the way down the train. then we start to train up

again. than waving, they are gone. talk about boycotting the olympic games. and that is the question. then we say okay. all the people out there waving are gone but some replaced them. what replaced them with dive bonds and they shot at the train. and 43 years later, life has changed and -- that was john

carlos in 2011 talking about the 1968 olympics. the elliptic games put together nations in a contest of athleticism and it is a solid, good thing to do. >> guest: i am not there. they constructor the olympic games in one set location every four years, then we can have a discussion about them and how they operate. the fact they go from city to city in a viral source and leave behind him this record of debt displacement at hyper militarization. that something i could never get my head around their support. i would be protesting, not out of some out realistic belief of what the olympics are but because my wife is a public school teacher and i would be concerned with the olympics would do to school funding and

what would happen to her students when you have hyper militarization that takes place and bringing in military hardware, and surveillance technology. when we speak about the super bowl and ways in which the commercials are such an attraction, the way madison avenue loves the super bowl it is their time to shine basically. that is what they see as their time to shine. these incredible expos where people who run the olympics, they see the latest in terms of recording people and find out where they are going and how to be operational in a way to pretense civil liberties, they maintain that and when i was in london for olympics in 2012,

and and after the olympics. not just to put them back in the box, can we? and i thought the box is a heckuva metaphor in the situation. the surveillance state that comes out of the box, the lipids are used as a lubricant to make that a reality, that is a problem. >> host: didn't we sponsor, several years ago, a quarterfinal, didn't we? for soccer? that went pretty well, didn't it? >> guest: that goes back to 94.

it is worthwhile to mention. >> host: i'm trying to segue into soccer. >> guest: 9/11 is such a game changer in terms of surveillance and militarization that it makes it very difficult. it is also like the world cup, a question like they are about to have the world cup, there has been all this media coverage on the use of slave labor to create the stadiums and the debts that have taken place to make the world cup hospitable and habitable and it is so much more difficult than it would be in the united states where you could do it in stadiums that exist in different cities and when you have that level of intensity and investment you have these issues and problems.

the demand made by the world governing body for soccer, it will create, i will use these phrases again, the debt displacement and militarization of public space. >> host: from brazil, dance with the devil, seth blatter is infamous for everything having to do with the regular even metronome, no matter the host country, the old stadiums are not good enough and the country must build a i have a quality stadiums lose you refer to him as the slithering head of fifa. >> now it is gianni, johnny boy as he is known. i love their names, seth blatter, johnny boy, people can infer what i'm saying. the problem with this demand means the existing

infrastructure won't be good enough and because the infrastructure is not good enough, demands for these construction projects in these construction projects are invariably rushed, invariably workers die on these projects because of the rush to get them built and invariably they are so hyperinvestment focused and after the world cup is over what is the use for these stadiums? there was talk in brazil about using one of these as an open-air prison afterwards. and another stadium we are talking about renting it out for weddings, there's not a lot of use for them particularly if built in a space that isn't necessarily a soccer mad environment. brazil is bigger than the continental united states. it is not soccer mad anywhere. they are building them in stadiums that will not use them when the world cup is done. that is why there are so many focused on the stadiums because they are living symbols of a

set of economic priorities which makes them beyond upset. >> host: 202-748-8200 in east and central time zones if you want to chat with author and sportswriter dave zirin. 202-748-8201 for those in the mountain and pacific. you are not the only writer in your family. >> guest: my dad has written a couple of books. very proud of them, terrific books which one is called the mother court about the southern district of new york. it has a lot of publicity for reasons you may be familiar with. he wrote a book about the supreme court called extremely partisan, very proud of him. i love my dad. >> host: he's not a writer by trade. >> guest: a lawyer by trade. he wanted me to join the legal profession but i didn't. now he is joining the writing profession. makes me feel kind of good in a circular way.

family tree going full circle but love my dad lots and he is a hero to me because he went to sundance because he's interviewed in a movie about donald trump's relationship with roy cohen, the infamous lawyer and fixer in new york, he got interviewed for that and they sent about. >> host: with your dad acquainted with mister cohen? >> guest: he met him a couple times but they were not acquainted, no. >> host: next call for dave zirin comes from been in new york city where dave zirin was raised. >> caller: how are you doing? it is been schapiro. not the right-wing pundits been schapiro but brilliant basil minded been schapiro. there's more than one. of the 15 important clarification, thank you for that. i wondered what your thoughts were about the upcoming

baseball season and how you see the history of boston sports. >> host: tell us about yourself, what do you do? >> caller: i don't write that much anymore but i was for period of time doing baseball writing for leisure report and have a twitter handle. we met a few times, really good. >> guest: you know a lot more about baseball than i do, you should be giving the answer. i will give my answer and if you have a different one, possibly a transformative figure given success on the diamond and his refusal to go to the trump white house, it puts him very much in across here's in the history of boston sports of people who may not like their black athletes to be political but he will transcend

that and be the kind of player people rally around and that will make him important and remembered beyond what he does on the field. >> caller: he have a chance to leave his mark in a number of ways. risk factors will be whether he stays in boston. you never know in the crazy baseball world but going out to re-sign him, he is really, i would say after brady right now he is probably the most popular athlete in boston which is saying a lot given boston's history. >> guest: one more question about the baseball season, what do you make of all these free agents not being assigned? what is that about? is that a failure of the union? >> caller: i know a lot about baseball but you know more about the history of the union. i would go so far as to suggest

that i think there will be a collusion investigation if this continues. much otto and harper, it is rare to get two free agent of that caliber in the same season and there isn't that much heat around them. there are more owners saying they don't want them than do want them and they have had issues as far as you could be reporting on the attitude of this, that or the other but no questioning the talent, why these guys remain signed is going to be a big question and the owners have to answer it at some point. >> guest: them and hundreds of other players who are unsigned in baseball. >> host: what did he mean by collusion? >> guest: the owners actually deciding among themselves, just like in the nfl, they allegedly decided not to sign colin, that

is what his lawsuit contends, that they are not going to sign these two incredible free agents, he mentioned them by last name, finished last season with the dodgers, and bryce harper with the washington nationals, both these players were rumored to get 300, $400 million contracts. >> host: to that is saying we don't want to go there. >> guest: that is a violation of union law. when they have been caught doing that in the past it cost tens of millions of dollars, this could cost hundreds of millions. it is difficult to prove collusion. there needs to be a smoking gun, whistleblower, paper trail. it is not enough to say like in collin her neck's case, so many terrible quarterbacks being signed, how could he not be signed? to say this is bryce harper, these are generational talents, how are they not being signed? that's not enough to prove collusion.

you need something that is transparently concrete. >> host: you mentioned dodger stadium, one of the icons of the league and no controversy about that? >> guest: so much controversy. it was once the poor man's shangri-la, latino and mexican immigrants yet this incredibly beautiful space they created among themselves in the place to settle in los angeles. this for man would reach south of the border to mexico and people would make the pilgrimage to live in this area and that area was torn apart. it was first turn apart for have -- housing. people sat in and then there

was this incredible twist like a novel by james elroy, a pulpy novel about los angeles where the people were accused of being communists and brought in front of the house un-american activities committee and you had all this land and the land was grabbed but with the help of an actor named ronald reagan who promoted it heavily, they were able to create this stadium for the now los angeles dollars who were at the time playing at the coliseum. >> host: that has been open since 62. >> guest: the first stadium landgrab. there is a terrific musical called the battle of chavez ravines that goes through the entire history of the story. >> host: zoot suit ryan happened there. raymond in michigan, high. >> caller: yes. i want to say mitch is such a hero of mine and this is so long overdue.

you are such a hero of mine as well. the one giant interviewing another giant and this platform for dave zirin is long overdue. his voice needs to be heard more often, there should be more journalists of integrity as dave zirin. what a great show this is and i want to say thank you. god bless you both. 's >> guest: i am huge in kalamazoo. not really. just to say i really appreciate that. one of the things when i started doing this work in 2005 i used to make a joke where i would say you could take all political sportswriters and we could have an annual meeting in a phone this. it wasn't this thing people did. it was a shallow time and it

has been gratifying in recent years to see this generation of people writing politically about sports, and athletes speaking out politically and understanding the power of this platform which i had forgotten for good solid 20 years, corporate sponsorship and making money and disavowal of politics. >> host: kalamazoo has a professional hockey team and in the midwest, used to be the international hockey league. would you call it some pro? >> guest: you might call it semi pro or minor-league hockey and fort wayne, a place where you have that. >> host: a lot of minor-league teams in that area, do they have the same issues we are talking about with professional teams.

>> because of the pipeline not producing players, i would need to investigate that further. when i have done talks, it is not like that with regard to other things. >> what we are talking about unique to the us, are they international? >> we play them out in different character, like racism can play itself out, sexism plays itself out in south america more than in the united states. there are common denominators in terms of progress, movement, leading figures, those are indigenous to the country itself. how do you eliminate racism in european soccer? how to the women's soccer team get greater recognition and greater funding? these battles have international component and it

is fascinating to compare and contrast how it plays out in different ways. one thing i learned from traveling, has a real impact around the world, when colin kaepernick took a knee, players of color were taking these in soccer leagues around the world. what happens in the united states gets watched very closely by different leagues around the world. >> host: next call for dave zirin comes from john in michigan. you are on booktv. >> caller: hey, dave, peter. first time caller on booktv. you've done a good job over the years. i love your stuff. question for dave, today being super bowl sunday. we know the nfl makes a lot of money. i was wondering about the ncaa and paper play and your spots for that.

>> host: do you have a nancy aa team that you follow? >> caller: yes. i am in notre dame irish guy. >> host: nicely done. i am against the idea of these players not being paid for what they produce. it is something absolutely unseemly about coaches, television deals that rake in millions of dollars in the position of the players, this is a problem that needs to be rectified, and this is the source of the problem. the nfl is part of the problem as well. they have this free minor league, and investing money in

it. people investing money in it are the students and the public and the rise of things like activity fees on college campuses, a lot goes into celebrating big-money high revenue sports programs, mentioning notre dame, you look at a place like notre dame it says so much about the way sports developed in this country, college football in particular, notre dame used to be a small college and textile community that had a football team. notre dame is the industry in south bend, whether or not notre dame has a good season or not has a ripple effect at south end. we don't usually take a step

back where healthy set of circumstances where an entire small city is dependent on the success of so-called amateurs for coaches that make millions of dollars. >> host: michael bennett and dave zirin's book "things that make white people uncomfortable," one chapter is titled the ncaa will give you pts day. >> and playing in the ncaa, there are a couple things that happen in the ncaa, big-time college football, the first is you are addicted to the acclaim and the accolades. the great sports writer for the new york times, you become addicted to the warm, these people idolize you and when that goes way, a huge, tiny

minority of players actually make the pros. they feel like there's nothing there for the men that creates a form of ptsd. the other form is an addiction to violence and an addiction to the emotion of getting into what amounts to a car accident, practice and playing as well. you mentioned the player in the book who was caught on camera running through a plate glass window to steal something. a lot of players talk about -- about players who after the fact that i think i'm depressed and there's nowhere to talk about mental health, no space to talk about the adjustment of being on college campus and getting this warm and finding out you're left with nothing when all is said and done

because you weren't allowed to take the classes you wanted to take, and take advantage of that scholarship and that is what people say, you can't pay the players, they are getting great education, without asking what is the substance of that education, what do they learn and what is the degree worth when they are done? >> host: are we in the evolution, not revolution period of athletes being played? >> guest: it is moving faster. i wish there was another word for like the red evolution because you are seeing more athletes stand up and assert their power. i interviewed recently kane coulter, the quarterback for northwest, at northwestern, that is an incredible story in and of itself. you are seeing more and more players openly and socially speak about the recognition that they are being exploited by paying -- playing college sports and it would only take a

couple teams are freezing -- refusing to play and wanting things like healthcare before they get back on the field are wanting to have a mediation process if they felt they were worked too hard. 17 players died in off-season drills since 2000. and congressional hearings about the state of the sport. this news came out with the death of a player at the university of maryland by the name of jordan mcnair. this will change with the ncaa, whether they are going to change without being forced to change is another question but something we saw couple years ago was players at the university of missouri, they made the decision they would not play as a protest against racism. they were going to hang on and

laugh, it lasted less then a week, they had to sacrifice $1 million a week if players were not taking the field. >> host: who is the head of the ncaa. >> guest: a lot of scrutiny and questions is believed to be over $2 million a year. the ncaa is a nonprofit. it was -- it stripped away its own nonprofit status because it was getting too much gusto for the fact. the ncaa and the nfl a few years ago were both declared nonprofits which is stunning. i don't know a lot of nonprofits where there are 14 vice presidents each of whom make $400,000 a year and upwards. that is how the ncaa operates.

it is a cartel, a closed kind of operation existing is a mechanism for the exploitation of these athletes. >> host: it exists because we want their product. >> guest: we would still want their product if payers were played. if players were paid. that is what is wrong about their argument. and for the revenue they brought in, the money is there when you see coaches have $9 million annual contracts, $10 million contracts. the sport -- i did an interview talking about this subject, talking