young boys, teaching them how to be men, a lot of positives, public enthusiasm. there are a lot of negatives. corrupting effect on education, public subsidies and so on. i wanted to weigh the two, and seek an answer to the question, is football fundamentally good or bad for us? secondarily, how should it be reformed, which is what it became about. >> alter the book, i noticed to get some strong personal opinions. i want to read one. this is in the middle of a paragraph -- what brought all that on in one

paragraph? >> congratulations for being able to pronounce "oleaginous." you are in a small minority, knowing that word. that is in a section, a chapter where i ask whether football has become a cult. you see some evidence of this presented in the book. i am talking about coaches, coaches who have become revered figures in american life. in some cases, justifiably. for instance, if all men were like tony dungy, the world would be a better place. i think coaches have become substitute father figures for a lot of american society. we don't believe in politicians anymore, businessmen, clergy, intellectuals, etc. coaches still seem like people who practice tough love. they seem like a good father would be. i think that has a lot to do with their high standing in society. >> you start out talking about a coach that you seem to like a lot. who was that? >> frank beamer of virginia tech.

i knew that portions of this book would be very critical of football. i wanted to give a constructive example, too, and show that it could be done under an ethical banner. i spent the 2011 football season with the virginia tech program. i was in the locker room, i traveled with them, and so on. the point is not to recount the season. but to explain how it is that frank beamer has been able to have 20 consecutive winning seasons and yet graduate 77% of his players. if all big college programs graduated 77% of their players, college football would not be notorious. >> we got interested in this book for the connection to the taxpayer. i want to show you video from 2006 of an economics professor, roger noll, from stanford, and get you to explain what he is talking about. >> in order for it to be an antitrust violation for the nfl to negotiate as a league for broadcasting rights, one has to

prove that televised football games are a separate relevant market. every time that issue has been litigated, it has been determined to be a separate relevant market. in that case, without the antitrust exemption, not only the nfl but major league baseball and the nba all would be in violation of the antitrust laws if they sold their broadcasting rights nationally as a league-wide consortium. >> that is one part of the discussion about antitrust laws. first of all, what is an antitrust law? >> your viewers probably remember from back in the gilded age resulted in the sherman antitrust act banned certain types of price collusion. it bans businesses from forming unified fronts, especially if involved in interstate commerce. sports leagues clearly do that. they do it legally. major league baseball got an antitrust exemption from the supreme court in 1922. congress does not directly control that, although could

alter the underlying statute. professional football got an antitrust exemption directly from congress as legislation in 1966. at that time, there were two leagues, the old afl and the old nfl. the antitrust exemption allowed them to merge and negotiate with television network as one single entity, which otherwise would have been price collusion. one reason the nfl was so successful is that they were exempt from antitrust law. imagine what apple would pay to be exempt from antitrust law. >> why? why does congress do that? >> i think a lover of football i am one, i love the sport -- i think you can argue that the antitrust exemption was good for football as a sport. it allowed the league to distribute revenues evenly, which the nfl now does, and insured quality of competition, common draft.

the games are much better games than they would be without antitrust exemption. maybe you can rationalize it on those grounds. congress got essentially nothing from the nfl in return, just gave away the store. congress should either revoke the nfl antitrust exemption or auction it off and see what the nfl is willing to pay for it. >> what is the motivation on the part of congress to make a special case out of some sports team? >> i think congress is cowed by football. football being the king of sports has the greatest cowing effect. football is so popular but there is so much money involved, public subsidies for most of the stadiums and so on, you would think that some populist champion would rise up in congress and say, yes, i love football too, but let's make these wealthy owners pay their way. that doesn't happen. i think congress is cowed. football owners provide campaign donations and photo ops.

members of congress love to have their pictures taken sitting in the owner's box of the hometown teams. that is why we don't see a populist champion rise up. i would always want the nfl to exist and play great games but i want them to stop using public subsidies and show more concern with safety. not just for their own players, but for the example they set for high school boys. >> you talk in your book about one of your childhood heroes, the former senator from new york. >> charles gooddell, yes. the father of roger goodell, the current nfl commissioner. my first involvement in politics living in kenmore new york, not far from jamestown, where roger goodell grew up, was to knock on doors for charles gooddell when i was 17. he was renowned as a man of conscience. the first prominent republican to favor environmental protection, one of the first members of congress to come out opposed to the vietnam war. he is roger's dad.

>> who is roger? >> roger goodell is the commissioner of the nfl. >> what does that mean? >> people think it means that he is in charge of the league. he is really not. he is an employee of the owners. he is a very highly-paid, well taken care of employee of the owners. $30 million a year. >> $30 million per year? >> yes, nfl headquarters is tax- exempt and it pays roger goodell $30 million a year. >> how did that happen? >> well, that 1966 piece of legislation we were just talking about that granted the antitrust waiver also -- classic example of the lobbyist art -- nfl lobbyists snuck the phrase "professional football leagues" into the description of a not- for-profit charitable enterprise. when congress voted in 1966, they said that museums, philanthropy, art institutions, opera houses and the professional football leagues are exempt from federal taxes.

that is the headquarters of the nfl at 345 park avenue in new york city, the individual clubs pay corporate income taxes, we assume. since they don't disclose anything, we don't know. >> why $30 million a year? how does he earn that money? >> people have said that he is worth that because the free market shows that the nfl is successful and it certainly is successful. the gains are consistently terrific. the league rolls in money, almost $10 billion per year in revenues expected this year. it is not the free market. stadiums are built largely at public expense. the central operation is tax- free. it is not a free market at all. why does he pay himself $30 million? because you can get away with it. that is the difference between him and his father. is it fair to ask the son to be a good a man as the father? maybe, maybe not. but if you ask that kind of question, roger goodell is the

kind of man his own father used to oppose. >> why would he oppose him? >> his father was a great man of conscience. i think he would view his own son as an insider using his position to take advantage of average people. >> didn't charles goodell change parties back in the 1970's from being a republican to a democrat? >> did he become a democrat? no, he ran for the senate as a republican. that was the three-way race between richard ottinger, charles goodell, and james buckley, who ultimately won with a minority. >> to go back to what you felt in those days, couldn't you also make a case that the public had turned against the vietnam war and charlie goodell decided to go against it? >> you could make that argument about anybody who turned against the war. edmund muskie, others of that period. i think he was ahead of the wave. he was a republican when he did both of those things. >> let me go back to this paragraph. "today, most politicians are oleaginous hacks."

what is an oleaginous hack? >> i am trying to think of a way to describe the kind of people you see on tv all day. you see politicians of both parties -- hopefully by the time this interview airs, the budget standoff will be resolved. right now we are in the middle of the budget standoff. where is the great figure of conscience on either side? both seem to me to be more concerned with pleasing their constituents and raising money at the moment. >> what does oleaginous mean? >> you pronounced it perfectly. it means oily. >> did you know that word or did you have to look it up? >> i actually did know that word. >> business executives seem greedy and antisocial. let me go back to roger goodell. couldn't he just see this as a great opportunity to make a lot of money, why not? >> everything that roger goodell

does is legal. no one is accusing him of any impropriety. as michael kinsley famously said, "the scandal is what's legal." for roger goodell to call his organization a nonprofit is legal, congress said he could. and then to pay himself $30 million seems oily to me. the assumption in tax law is that nonprofit status should not be used as a subterfuge for personal enrichment. that is how the nfl uses it. and it is not just him, there are several other executives who are paid multimillion dollar salaries. >> as you said earlier, this whole area has to do with the coaches and the cult of coaches in the country. but coaches, you talk about money, you talk about the kind of money that the coach of alabama gets a year. how much does he make? >> nick saban, the coach of alabama, he has won the last two bcs titles. he makes $6 million a year. that is not bad money either. what that equates to is $66,000 per year per scholarship player under his supervision.

that is pretty good money. >> how does that happen? does alabama make money for education? >> all of the big football factory programs, there are roughly 50 at this point, florida, alabama, ohio state and so on, they all clear $30 million to $50 million a year on football. that is just in the last 10 years the number has gone up because television rights for college football are currently increasing at a faster pace than the rights fees for professional football. although rights fees for pro football do pretty well, too. it is college where the big growth is in money terms. the last 10 years, the amount of money that college football programs clear has gone from $5 million, $6 million a year to $30 million to $50 million a year. the figure for alabama, they cleared $43 million after paying nick saban $6 million and several of his assistant coaches $1 million. >> what do they do with the extra money?

>> they spend it on the athletic department. in alabama's case, the $43 million, $4 milllion of it went to the school's endowment, the rest of it was kept by the athletic department. lsu, which won the national championship four years ago, made a big announcement last summer that since they were clearing $50 million a year on football, from now on, they would give 15% of what they cleared to the school's academic endowment. pretty generous, huh? >> you have got lots of figures in here about college activities. how did you get those figures? where are they published? >> the department of education began collecting that data about five years ago. it is quirky and it is hard to find, but i can tell you the website if you would like to go look at it. >> what is it? is it the u.s. education department? >> it is one of those very long chains of letters and numbers. it is in the references to the book. i will point it out to you.

>> go back to college football. what is wrong with any of this? what does the law say that they can do in college sports? >> when you talk about college sports, i don't think anything at all is wrong with college sports rolling in money. that is fine with me. a lot of parents and students would object to the fact that many schools charge athletic fees to their regular students even though their football programs are rolling in money. we are a few miles from the college park campus at the university of maryland. an undergraduate student there pays $398 per year for an athletic fee. it all goes to the football program even though the football program rolls in money. that is a minor objection to the status of college football. the quality of the games is consistently fabulous. every week, there are 50 fabulous college football games. but of the division i players, only 55% graduate.

some people would tell you the problem is the players are not being paid. there is a lot of money in the system. i don't think that is the big problem. the big problem is they are not graduating because i college diploma would be worth more to them than any amount that could be paid under a possible scheme. >> what difference does it make if you are a young man and you can go into college football and get a scholarship and then go right into the pros and make -- what is the average football player making? >> $1.9 million is the current average. >> is there a minimum? >> the minimum is $425,000. most players at the minimum level only play for a year or two. the way you set the question up, there is no problem. if i knew that i was going to be a number one draft choice in the nfl and win a huge contract, i wouldn't need a college diploma. i could always go back and get it later. the trouble is, this happens to hardly anyone.

at the big college level, the best teams, one player in 35 ever receives an nfl paycheck. one player in 90 stays in the nfl long enough to have a career. i call this the grand illusion of college football. these handsome, muscular, hard- working young men say, i'm going to go to the pros and i am going to drive a mercedes and my life will be set. they don't graduate from college except for a handful. none of those things will ever happen. >> how many would have gotten into college in the first place if they were not an athlete? >> that is a good question. there are two things high school football can do for you. one is get you a college scholarship. it can also get you an athletic admission to a college that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to get into. this year, i will give you the ivy league statistics. the football coaches of all the ivy league schools have 14 athletic admits that they can

use. the other sports have a lesser number. the football coaches can essentially admit 14 boys who wouldn't have qualified for cornell or brown or other greats schools like that. via the athletic admission. you can either get a scholarship or an athletic admission. the smart kids use the athletic admission and instead of going to a big football factory school, they go to yale and get in and graduate and put their lives on a solid footing. if you use football or any high school sport to get yourself a college scholarship or athletic admission, you have done the smart thing as long as you go on and graduate. >> could i, if i had only 800 points on my sat and the yale football coach wanted me there to play football, could i go? >> not with 800. the ivy league schools use and academic index that requires you to get, i think this year it is

26 on the act. they require you to be in the top third of scores. >> go back to the fact -- the state schools -- are there any different rules for state schools and how much money they can either collect or use for the athletic program or the number of scholarships they can give? >> division i limits scholarships to 85 per year. the university of alabama has 85 scholarships for football. 85 is the maximum they can use. most of the big programs use their maximum. the smaller programs that have money problems don't use their maximum. the maximum is 63 for division ii, division iii does not allow athletic scholarships it does allow athletic admission. >> when did the coaches' salaries in college skyrocket? >> it started about 20 years ago. you may remember -- the big money skyrocketed about 20 years

ago. in 1984, the supreme court deregulated college football. before that, the ncaa could control how many games were on. very few games were on. when college football was deregulated in 1984, the number of games on tv shot way up. this week, in the washington dc area, 46 college football games are going to be aired. this led to a huge increase in payments to college teams. i have no problem at all, i think it is great that college football teams are getting lots of money. but the money has gone mainly to building fantastic facilities. the university of oregon now has a football facility that looks like a modern art museum. it cost 87 million dollars, tax- deductible, so taxpayers paid about a third of it. >> go back to the tax-deductible thing. who gets to deduct the taxes? >> the donor. in the case of the university of

oregon, phil knight, the guy who founded nike, donated the $87 million. that is the reported figure. i assume it is close to true. he could the duck that -- deduct that, i assume that he did, i don't know because i haven't seen his taxes. if he used a tax deduction on that, taxpayers would have paid about a third of the cost of building that building. almost all donations to academia are tax-deductible, including to football. ohio state, we want them -- we want donations to the academic institution to be tax-deductible because it serves a higher purpose of society. if i give $70 million to ohio state's football program, that money is also tax-deductible and football is fabulous but it does not serve any larger purpose for society. >> how did it develop in this country that coaches make $6 million or $3 million and the

president of the school makes $0.5 million? >> not only the coaches but the assistant coaches. there are 30 or 40 assistant coaches at the college level who make more than the president of the college or any faculty member including the faculty members of the medical school. it is the same reason that roger goodell pays himself $30 million because he can. colleges pay huge amount to their coaches because they can. when money is rolling in, the athletic departments want to spend it on themselves, not on the larger academic missions. we just mentioned ohio state. currently, ohio state's athletic department staff is twice as large as the english department staff. even though roughly one percent of ohio state students have any role in the athletic department. almost all students take an english course. they are spending the money on themselves. >> kids that go to ohio state,

alumni from ohio state love the fact that they have such a hot football team or basketball team. doesn't that draw students? >> in my chapter on college economics, i say one of the good things you can say for football is it makes people excited about going to colleges. big public university expansion just after world war ii -- football excitement began roughly around the same time. before world war ii, the ivy league, university of chicago, those were the football powers. after the g.i. bill, the power in college football shifted to big public schools. people should be excited about going to university. one reason why the united states has more college graduates per capita than any nation is that we have really exciting college campuses because we have big deal football, basketball, volleyball and other sports.

young people, especially young men, want to go to college because it is exciting to be in college. >> to the national football team. i want to show you some 1999 video of the late senator arlen specter on the floor of the senate. >> i have sought recognition to introduce the stadium financing and franchise relocation act of 1999. this legislation would require that the national football league and major league baseball act to provide financing for 50% of new stadium construction costs. and that the national football league be given a limited antitrust exemption to regulate franchise moves. this legislation is necessary because baseball and football have for too long had a public

be damned attitude. at the present time, major league sports is out of control on franchise moves for football teams and demands upon cities and states for exorbitant construction cost which is a form of legalized extortion. >> he comes from philadelphia, big sports town. what would be his motivation? what success did he have with that? >> senator specter -- i knew him a little bit -- he was the closest thing to a populist champion who was critical of the professional sports subsidies. you just heard him say he wanted the nfl to pay 50% of the cost of its stadiums. the figure is currently that the public has paid 70% of the cost of building and operating nfl stadiums. >> give us an example of a stadium that was built with taxpayer money.

>> lucas oil field in indianapolis where the super bowl was a year and a half ago. fantastic game, giants versus patriots, a game that ended on the crazy play where the new york giants player tried to stop himself from scoring a touchdown in order to make the clock run out. that was a wonderful game and the taxpayers of indiana pay the entire cost of that stadium. the ownership of the colts didn't pay anything. the ownership family, close to $1 billion in net worth. the public built the stadium for them. the irsays keep all the revenue. they pay a token rent. >> give us another example. >> paul allen, one of the richest people in the world, the former microsoft executive owns the seattle seahawks. a fabulous team they are playing , well. the stadium that they play in which is a beautiful field, a gorgeous place to watch a football game, taxpayers of washington state paid for that stadium. paul allen, net worth north of

$15 billion and yet the public paid for the stadium and paul allen keeps almost all the revenues generated by it. he pays a token rent of about $1 million per year. that is the kind of thing that made arlen specter mad. it makes me mad, too. >> who built the dallas stadium? >> the new dallas stadium -- i have been there for the super bowl and nba all-star game. it is a wonderful facility. it is very futuristic looking. there are clubs at all levels, go-go dancers at all levels. jerry jones paid most of the cost. on the other hand, his facility operates tax-free. he doesn't pay any property taxes. >> why not? >> he got a special deal from the texas state legislature. if you or any other kind of business -- if c-span built a building there, you would have to pay property taxes. jerry jones doesn't pay any property taxes. based on other comparable businesses in the same county, he should be paying $6 million

to $8 million a year in property taxes. he does not pay anything. >> here is a clip from 1996 with senator john mccain talking about another aspect of taxpayer money. >> fema spent 5 million dollars to repair the anaheim stadium scoreboard. i'm sure that the good people of anaheim appreciate this federal largess and will enjoy watching this new scoreboard but i don't believe that such a repair is a federal responsibility. anaheim stadium is an entity that charges admission. i would assume it strives to make a profit. yet i have heard of no one offering to pay back the federal government for its investment in the scoreboard. >> this is a democracy, a republic where the voter has something to say about who is in office. isn't this what the taxpayer wants?

>> maybe, if taxpayers want to be bled dry for sports. let's give another example. senator mccain mentions federal construction funds to repair a stadium. the place that is now called the mercedes-benz superdome in new orleans, built entirely at public expense, after hurricane katrina, badly damaged. when it hosted football games again, that was a national feel- good story. the public paid for all the repairs. the league put in a token amount. the public has invested about $1 billion in the construction of the mercedes-benz superdome. the man who owns the new orleans saints keeps almost all the revenue generated there. why don't people rebel against this? i think one reason is that many people in the public don't understand this is taking place. i think the second reason is they feel like there is nothing they can do about it. it is largely based on insider deals. it is, largely.

the most recent time there was a vote -- in miami, there was a vote on whether they use public money to renovate the place where the miami dolphins play. and the citizens of miami voted strongly against doing that. usually, people don't get to vote. i think there is also -- going back, you remember the sociology of the sport. 50 years ago when the antitrust waiver was first granted, there was a paltry amount of money in all professional sports compared to today. even if you adjust to current dollars. nfl owners at that period could not have afforded to build beautiful stadiums. an assumption arose that a stadium was like a public library, something the public should contribute to and the public would get to use by coming in. that was 50 years ago. say, -- today, the nfl owners role in money.

foread of people come in five dollars, it costs $150 to come in and the game is blacked out if the stadium is not sold out. the idea of public funding and a stadium did have a logical reason when it started. it just outlived its usefulness. >> any national professional sport not have the anti-trust exemption? >> i do not know about basketball or soccer. i know football and baseball both do. >> has there been any effort in the last few years to take that away from them with all the money that is flying back and forth? >> i think senator specter was the last person who struggled with removing the antitrust exemption. that did not happen. >> when did you get interested in this? you can tell in your book that you're angry about it. where does that come from? >> you should be angry. the funding part makes me angry. rich people shouldn't be subsidized by the public. i don't like taxes, you know -- nobody likes taxes. if rich people don't pay their fair share, than average people have to pay more. i want that to change. i am more concerned about the

health damage that football does to young people and the corrupting effect on college education. these affect far larger numbers of americans. in my own case, i started writing my football column for espn in 2000, 2001, somewhere in there. i thought i should take a look at some of the health research. i was shocked with what i saw. i had two boys who wanted to play football. i did not allow them to play football until they were in middle school because the research -- any parents who are wondering whether they should let their boy or girl play youth football, the answer is no. your children should not play youth tackle football, not until the age of 13 or so. the pediatric research is ironclad on that point. with my own boys, i read the research. i got involved in coaching them

in middle school. i didn't let either of them play until middle school. it did not stop them from being recruited to play in the ncaa. you can have a great coach football career without playing when you're 10 years old. it also made me think, i had been viewing football the way most of the networks do it, as a form of entertainment. it certainly is a form of entertainment. but it has health and social consequences that have to be dealt with. that was the genesis of this book. >> who do you think is going to read this book? >> i would like to think that people who like football but have second thoughts. i was at a social event a few weeks ago talking to a supreme court justice and she asked me about the book. she said, i love to watch football games but i feel like it is a guilty pleasure. it is like watching boxing. ml watching people injured themselves? should i turn the tv off and not enjoy a football game? anyone who has asked themselves

that question should read this book. the book ends with a reform agenda. >> a person i know told me the other day that he was taking his son to a dallas game and the tickets were $1200 apiece. that would be a good ticket, a >> -- >> that would be a good ticket, a low seat behind the sideline or something. >> why would somebody spend that kind of money on a football game? >> you have asked a free-market question. why do people spend a lot of money on designer clothes? is a bmw meaningfully better than a hyundai? if you have got the money and you want to spend it, i don't object to people spending a lot of money on football games. what i object to is the taxpayer spending a lot of money on football games. >> what about the antitrust provisions? does that allow the dallas cowboys to be the only game in town? >> the antitrust exemption has to do with the way the nfl negotiates with the broadcast networks. >> only yucca -- only?

>> it also allows them to conduct a common draft which is important to making football a high-quality sport. mainly, it has to do with their broadcast negotiations. otherwise, individual teams would negotiate individually with networks. >> there are 32 nfl teams. is there anyway that there could be competition, enough competition that those prices would come down for those teams? does antitrust help them in any way their? >> oliver wendell holmes in 1922 said that interstate commerce does not apply here because the entire game is played within one stadium and the stadium sits within the borders of one state. oliver wendell holmes, if he were to come back today, would see in entirely different economic landscape. the cost of walking into the kansas city chiefs stadium is going to apply to you and only you. somebody else isn't going to build a stadium next door and say, you can watch the kansas city chiefs play here and i will

only charge you half as much. if they didn't have either the antitrust exemption or another huge favor, images created in publicly funded facilities can be copyrighted, that is how the nfl is able to bargain off. starting next year, the nfl will get about $6 billion from the television networks. the reason the number is so high is that the images are copyrighted. if the images were not copyrighted, then anybody could go into the stadium and set up a camera and broadcast the game. all the prices would decline extremely rapidly. >> to connect it to people watching this network. in the cable television world, networks that you write for, espn, they get $5.5 per month per customer. this network gets six cents. our number has not gone up very much over the years.

their number keeps going up every year. they were going up 20% a year at one point. you write for them and they pay these extraordinary rights to these teams. the players make extraordinary amount of money. is espn protected in this business? >> i don't know. it certainly is a beneficiary of everything we have just talked about. i think that works out to about 125 times per month what c-span is paid. >> at least. >> espn can't be that much more important to society. if people voluntarily made those choices, since i love sports and i also love c-span, i would voluntarily pay both of those fees. most people would not voluntarily pay $5.5 per month for espn. if they could choose, they would say no, i will pay my six cents for c-span. but i am not going to pay that money for espn. many people would voluntarily choose that. when you look at the landscape

of how football is televised, espn is a broadcast partner of the nfl. cbs, fox, nbc, they are all broadcast partners. abc is not but abc and espn have common ownership. all the big broadcast networks are broadcast partners of the nfl. by the strangest and most amazing coincidence, none of them report very much on the things that were discussing today. >> why not? >> it is bad for business. >> can you write about it? >> yes, i have written including on espn.com about the economic flaws and the system of professional sports. this book is full of the discussion of things that are wrong with espn, cbs, nbc, etc. all the networks that broadcast football share common faults. i write about them and talk about them all the time. i am intellectual, the thing

that goes out to prime time on monday night football or sunday night football, you don't hear a lot of concussions and public subsidies on those shows. >> here is sally jenkins who writes for "the washington post" talking about this same issue. >> the bond issue that taxpayers past to help finance the stadiums, it means there is money not going to be spent on something else. it also means bigger deficits. deficits are killing states. why should new jersey be strapped with $110 million debt on a stadium that no longer exists when they are laying off cops and firefighters and public schools don't have supplies for kids? these are questions we should be asking more frequently. when we talk about spending public money for this great cultural celebration we call football. >> that was in 2011. what is the story behind new jersey taxpayers paying $110 million a year for a stadium that doesn't exist? >> it was

torn down to build the current metlife stadium. sally jenkins raises a great point. to the extent of they are privately funded, they are funded with tax free bonds. you mentioned arlington, texas a moment ago. on paper, jerry jones raised money using tax-free bonds. the bonds that the investors pay no taxes on -- nobody likes taxes but if jerry jones doesn't pay taxes on his business facility, that means average people have to pay more. in the case of new jersey, stadium authorities -- most nfl stadiums, the mechanism of their creation is a thing called a stadium authority that is run either by a county council or a state legislature. those are the organizations that actually raise money. in the case of new jersey, the old stadium was torn down to build metlife three years ago.

that was used as a cookie jar i -- by a generation of corrupt new jersey politicians. year in year out, the amount of indebtedness for the stadium increased rather than declined. the taxpayers of new jersey still owe money on the stadium that no longer exists. they may owe the stadium that now exists far into the future as well. >> where is there a stadium in the united states that was not paid for in any way by taxpayers? >> judith grant of harvard is the key researcher on the subject. if you take into account construction, parking lots, freeway ramps, public transit, the only two stadiums in the country where the owners actually paid more than three

quarters are metlife, the one in new jersey which is shared by the jets and giants and gillette field where the new england patriots played. they are the only two that you could say the owners were fair with the public in the construction. >> do you have any idea why they were fair with the public? >> in the case of the patriots, i think robert kraft is one of the best businessman in the league. he is a real sharp businessman. sign, but hedollar also has a public spirit. he gave $100 million to columbia. i think he felt it wouldn't be right for the public to pay for his stadium. in the case of the owners of the jets and giants, they had heard very loudly from the legislatures of new jersey and new york that they weren't going to be taken advantage of again. those three sets of ownerships, they might argue that they are better off owning all or most of their stadium. it gives them more control. in the case of robert kraft, i think it was just public

spiritedness. in the case of the jets and the giants, they did not have a choice. >> how would you describe your politics at this stage in your life? >> i am a centrist democrat. i always have been. >> i want to show you a clip. i do not think you have ever seen this. this was last year in 2012. i want you to explain this to the public. >> he wrote the forward, because there is one other name, one other judicial name associated with the two principal theories of this book -- textualism and originalism -- it is frank easterbrook. if i had to pick somebody to replace me on the supreme court, it would be frank. he and i tend to see things the same because we are both playing the same principles of textualism and originalism.

>> frank easterbrook, seventh circuit judge, chicago illinois, your brother. >> chief judge. >> your brother, how does that happen in a family? i assume you are very different in your thinking. >> not so much. politically, maybe a little bit different. i am very proud of my older brother. i am also proud of my younger brother who is a teacher in fort worth. frank is, i would say more libertarian than conservative. libertarianism has a lot of appeal to me or anybody who thinks about it. i would probably be to the left of him on some issues. what i admire about frank, he is incredibly logical. he not only knows the legal profession backward and forward, but he uses the detached logic to arrive at conclusions. having read emerson and thoreau, i think detached logic is the best way.

he is a nominee of president reagan. frank just gave a wonderful memorial speech for robert a couple of months ago. our youngest brother neil teaches english literature, he is to the left of me. you can imagine what our family conversations are like. >> what were your parents like? what were their politics? >> i would say, my mother who died when i was young was a public school teacher, very intelligent, very high iq. very left wing. she had been born in a different era. she would have been a member of congress or something. my father was sort of a self- made man, born on a farm in ontario during the depression, became a dentist, put himself through dental school. i would say that he had middle- of-the-road politics. >> where did you grow up? >> buffalo, new york. >> where did you go to college?

>> colorado college. >> how did that happen yucca >> i put myself through college. colorado college was a private liberal arts school that charged significantly less than the schools of the northeast. >> where did you get interested in writing? i assume that has been most of your career. >> i spent almost all of my adulthood as a writer. i am still trying to make myself just a book writer. that would be my goal. i do other things as well. childhood ambition -- >> here you are in 1992. on this network. >> the piece is on global warming, to summarize as quickly as possible, i would say the science of global warming is very shaky. it is something that may happen someday but there is no serious reason to believe it is happening already. obviously we have a natural greenhouse effect that warms the climate. nobody disputes that. in any rate, the short version

of the article, the science is shaky. artificial greenhouse may happen someday. most research continues to suggest it will be less fearsome than was earlier predicted. given those things, what you would do to stave off the greenhouse effect -- the case for energy efficiency is very sound. >> over 20 years ago, the magazine you were working for no longer exists. you have changed some since then. >> that handsome, slender guy no longer exists. >> what happened to your thinking about global warming? >> i follow that subject closely. in 1995, i published a book about environmental issues which did pretty well. i think it holds up with the passage of time. in the year 2005, i switched sides on global warming because at that time, the national academy of sciences issued a statement saying that the national academy had become convinced that artificially triggered global warming was occurring.

in 1992, that quote you have at that time, they would have issued the same degree of skepticism that i did. i don't claim to know more about science than the national academy of sciences. when they switched sides, i switched sides. i did op-ed pieces and big newspapers saying that i had switched sides. i am now convinced that artificial global warming is occurring. i also agree with the 1992 version of myself in saying that it doesn't seem to be the calamity that was predicted. i don't think it will be the calamity that was predicted. it is just a real problem that we have to deal with. >> let's go back to football. here is your early hero's son , roger goodell testifying in , 2009. >> we want to make sure our game is safe and we are doing everything we can for our players now. that is why we have engaged progressively in making changes to our game.

we have done some of the things that have been discussed here on a variety of levels. start with the fact that we have made significant rule changes to our game. five rule changes this year alone have been made that are improving the safety and welfare of our players. they have had a positive impact in the short term that they have been in place. we will continue to evaluate rule changes to make our game safer. many of those changes this year were specific to head injuries. >> how important is this issue? >> head injuries, it is the number one health question in all of athletics right now. i will give the nfl some credit. they are saying the right things now. that is progress compared to where they were 10 years ago. they are trying to set a better example. the big concern with neurological damage from football is not -- nobody wants an nfl player to get hurt -- but there are only 2000 of them. there are 3 million youth

players. i am talking about tackle football with helmets on. 1.1 million high school players. that is where almost all concussions occur. almost all neurological damage done by football is done to children. youth players or high school players are legally children. 40,000 to 60,000 concussions per year at the high school level. in youth sports, it is harder to determine. it is in the tens of thousands. a lot of the neurological research is showing that it is not spectacular knockout hits that cause most neurological damage. it is the slow accumulation of lots of minor hits. what has happened in the last 10, 20 years, the number of kids playing youth football has gone way up. the number of states that allow year-round high school football has gone way up. the slow accumulation of minor hits to people's heads has gone way up. in a society where education is so important, it can't be good

that more and more boys are spending more and more of their time bashing each other in the head. >> what about drugs? you write about opioids in your book. you write about toradol. how does that fit into the sports world? >> i think painkiller use is at a much higher level in the nfl than people realize. if people realized the level of painkiller use, they would be scandalized. steroids are under control in football. football has been testing for steroids for a while. i think it is not a big issue there. toradol is a very strong injected version of the over- the-counter painkiller aleve. it is ok to take it once in a while, that is fine. pro football players, lots of them get injected with toradol before games, when they are feeling fine. not to treat an existing injury, but just so that they won't feel pain during the games. this allows them to play

fearlessly. it makes for those knockout hits that sportscenter likes so much. it sets a bad example for kids that play, throw your body, lead with your head. see, it doesn't hurt. these nfl players don't look like they are hurt. they are fine. that is because they were injected with painkillers before the game. i tried to get the nfl to release data to me. they would not. i talked to the physician on their committee. he was very cagey on the use levels. all medical research is based on anonymous data. you don't need to know the statistic of what player got how many shots. you do need to know how many teams are using. the nfl will not release that information. same with prescription painkillers, as recently as 10 years ago, the drug plague in the united states was illegal street drugs that cause overdose deaths. now, prescription pain killers that are legally issued to people cause more overdose deaths than street drugs do.

every locker room in the nfl is a small pharmacy. guys are popping opioids which is vicodin, oxycontin and so on. they are popping them because they hurt. but they are popping them. the nfl won't release that data either. >> why not? >> it would be so bad for business. they would be humiliated. >> would anybody really care? why do people watch what some people think is violence on a football field? >> some of it is violent. football is an aggressive sport. i don't have any problem with that. some people have made the argument that football is professional boxing and helmets. the crowd is there because they want to see guys' heads go flying backward like that. they want to see people lying motionless on the ground. they don't care if these guys beat each other up. they are adults, they know what they are getting into. >> there is an element of that.

>> the elements the crowd wants to see. i don't think it is a majority. i don't think nine out of 10 football fans want to see -- a clean, hard hitting game. that is what i want to see. most fans are like that. when you create this, you see this nfl game where there is this incredible violent contact and everybody gets up and walks away. it is fine, let's go home and have a few laughs. nobody is really hurt. high school football players see that and imitate that behavior. they injure themselves and they are never going to get a scholarship or in nfl paycheck. >> why has football been so popular in the united states and not nearly as popular around the world? >> that is a good question. we are the only country that loves gridiron style football. canada likes it that they have ice hockey as the national sport there. i think it is because we are the only country that could pull it off.

football is an athletic interpretation of what the united states is. our good and our bad. we can do things that are complicated, that nobody else can do. we put a man on the moon and we can play these games that involve 50 players on each side , each wearing a lot of expensive equipment. we are big, we are noisy, we are ,razy, we are allowed -- loud we are sexy. baseball has this pastoral elegance to it. it doesn't make you feel like only a crazy american could do this. football gives you that feeling. within limits, it is great that football is so crazy and loud and expensive. that is also why only america could pull it off. >> how have the green bay packers stood out among the teams? because it is owned by the public. why have all the rest of the teams been bought by billionaire? >> the green bay packers are the

only professional sports franchise in football that is owned by the public. they have public shares although they are nonvoting shares. because they have public shares, they have to disclose data. everything we know about the other 31 teams is based on extrapolating from the green bay packers. last year, they had a profit of about $45 million. team is highly publicly subsidized. they pay almost nothing for their stadium. the voters of wisconsin -- the packers are so popular in wisconsin, if there was a vote, i'm sure it would pass. >> your book, quote gregg easterbrook. nfl owners are pigs at the trough. >> aren't they? the ownership families, the state of california has in effect built them a stadium in santa clara. i am sure it will be a wonderful stadium. that family has a net worth of more than $1 billion. they could have paid for the stadium themselves.

if there is lots of money in the trough, why not slop some up? >> as you just said, it really speaks for what this country is. the largest television audience in history, the super bowl every year. >> if voters understood this better and if they had a chance to vote, they would normally vote against subsidies for sports. in the case of the green bay packers, citizens of wisconsin might vote in favor of subsidies. we know that in miami, florida, citizens voted against subsidies for the nfl. if people had a chance to vote, they would normally vote against it. poll questions have so much to do with how the question is phrased. if the question was, do you want your local nfl franchise to go out of business, everybody would say no. if the question was, the average nfl franchise has $45 million a year in profit, should they pay for their own stadium? everybody would say yes.

>> you said you are in intellectual. quote, intellectuals have become contentious of average people. what about intellectuals? why have they become contemptuous of average people and are you? >> well, i try to keep myself in touch by attending and coaching football games. i would base that statement mainly on modern fiction. >> so, we are done. gregg easterbrook, the book is called "the king of sports: football's impact on america." thank you very much for joining us. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and- a.org. programs are also available as c-span podcasts.

>> up next on c-span, "washington journal." live at arlington national cemetery, president obama will participate in the annual veterans day wreath laying ceremony. at 1:00 p.m., live coverage from the national press club of the ceo of charles schwab on future retirees. mrs. kennedy is very well- known known as a style icon. mrs. kennedy put a lot of thought into her wardrobe when she was representing the country at the white house and while traveling abroad. she would think about what colors would mean something to the country.

for her visit to canada, she as a gestured suit of respect for the red of the canadian maple leaf. i really admire the thought she put into her wardrobe. she also knew the advantage of choosing a color or style that would make her stand out in a crowd. >> first lady jacqueline kennedy, tonight at 9:00 eastern on c-span and c-span3. also on c-span radio and c- span.org. on this veterans day, "washington journal" is devoting its program to issues important to veterans. first, michael noonan talks about the divide that exists between regular citizens and the military. after that, editor of military.com talks about efforts to find service members jobs.

discussion of the issues facing veterans. tom tarantino from the organization iraq and afghanistan veterans of america joins us. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] morning.d monday, november 11, 2013, veterans day in the united states. you are looking at the live shot of the three services -- theicemen statue on national mall in washington dc we will be devoting our entire the to veterans issues, civilian-military divide, unemployment rate, disability benefits and several other topics but before we get to that we are opening our phone lines the morning to you to get your thoughts on who represent veterans day.