♪ ♪ good sunday morning. we are tracking two fast-moving stories. it's been more than two weeks since malaysia flight 370 vanished. the search has expanded. are there new clues pointing towards the plane's whereabouts this morning? are we any closer to figuring out what happened and why? i've got a conversation with experts about in this morning and about the security questions that linger. also, the crisis in ukraine. i'll speak to house intelligence committee chairman mike rogers and ask why he's so worried about what vladimir putin might do next. as millions are captivated by march madness, there's a big debate this morning about whether student athletes should be paid to play. the president of the ncaa will be here exclusively along with president obama's education

secretary and a prominent former duke basketball player as we take on the issue. plus, a key newsmaker this morning. an exclusive interview with former president jimmy carter. he also tangled with the soviet union. he'll tell us why he thinks president obama has not asked for his advice. first this morning, the latest on the search for the flight 370. i'm joined by bill neely in petr, australia. >> reporter: a fourth day of searching ended here a. fleet of planes from the u.s., australia out today. four military, four civilian. the focus of their search really is twofold.

first of all, big debris and the breaking news is that a french satellite has picked up images of objects in the southern search area. now, it's still not clear what those objects are, but it is the second day that we've had a new satellite image. that's three satellite images overall. but the crews are also looking for something very small, specifically a wooden cargo pallet and some straps or belts, multicolored. those two things seen by a civilian aircraft. now, the problem is that for these crews flying at 200 miles an hour just a few hundred feet above the water, trying to find a wooden cargo pallet in choppy seas is pretty difficult. secondly, it could just have easily have come from a passing ship as from a crashing plane. the crews here, their morale is good, they're optimistic. you know, the problem is that the mystery of this missing plane remains, even as all those crews, all this hi-tech machinery is focused on trying to find it. david?

>> bill neely for us in perth, australia. thanks so much. i'm joined by michael chertoff, also by bob haiger, long-time aviation correspondent for nbc. great to have both of you. bob, let's pick up on what bill is saying. the fact that there's debris that's scattered around, if you put it together, do you think that's significant? >> well, yes, i mean, they're starting to get a lot of satellite photos of this. i wonder if they're all seeing the same pieces of debris. you've got to the hope it's from this plane. >> right, of course. and perhaps it is, perhaps it's not. but if that is, we have the currents to worry about. you've got bad weather and wind. it's all about finding the black box which is actually not black but you've got an example of one. >> here's the box. these pieces, they wouldn't tell you anything about the crash if they find them. if you can trace them back through the currents, this would be the prize, getting these twos black boxes. this is a flight today recorder. this is the important thing, the

pinger, sends out this an underwater pink for a month, month and a half after the crash. if they don't -- and then you can zero in if you're near the pinger in the water. >> that's the thing, getting near enough to it. this is a huge search area right now. how close do have to be? >> oh, you have to be about f e five, six, miles, maybe even ten at the outside. you've got to have a pretty good idea where it is. if they don't get a pinger, boy. >> it could be lost. it's a race against time. how much time have they got? >> well, on the pinger, i'd say maybe another month before it runs out. then they found objects in the water mile, a couple miles down years later. but they always had a better idea where to look. in this case, if we don't hear the pinger, i'm wondering if they'll ever find any of it. >> mike chertoff, look, this is a primal fear anybody has, you're on an airplane that goes down or just vanishes. it may sound like a naive

question but in this age when we can find our iphone with gps, how do we lose sight after aircraft? >> one of the questions is whether the malaysians were forthcoming what they saw in terms of radar or whether they held back information. so part of the problem is i think there was a scarcity of information at the beginning and there may have been some misinformation, perhaps, inadvertent. that's made it more difficult. >> what do you worry about now? there's a scenario that took place that we're trying to piece together. after 9/11 when we thought so much about aviation security, are there any things we need to learn from here? >> i think there are. one of the theories is one or more of the pilots may have been involved in this. of course, much of our screening has been focused on passengers. increasingly we face the question of inside threats. what do you do when people who are working in an organization or an enterprise become a problem? it could be pilots. it could be members of a crew. we've seen a variation of that with snowden. so i think the issue of screening and understanding when

people are going off the rails inside the enterprise is going to become more of an issue. >> as we look to this week upcoming, bob, in the search, in the investigation, what are the key milestones you want to look for this week? >> you want to find wreckage. that's the big thing. you really want to hear more about this investigation into the private lives of the cockpit crew. but if neither of those things, you know, reveals anything, we've got a case we may never know. >> the current. the issue that oceanographers will look at, how formidable is that? if you're finding some wreckage even now, the way this thing could be moving, how big a pieces? >> they've got elaborate schemes on the computer where they can trace back currents in the ocean. even the best of them in air france, that was five years ago off brazil, when the computer calculated it, they were about 40 miles off or something like that. computer calculations only get you so far. that's a really tough task to figure out where the main body

of wreckage is. >> but you've been doing for decades. we may never know. >> that's my concern here. maybe already know enough to learn some lessons from what we know about not being able to trace things better and so forth. but we may never know what happened on this deal. >> what do you look for this week on the investigation piece of it? >> i think one of the key issues will be what did they find in the background of the pilots. i don't want to accuse them of anything, but clearly, if there were something there. >> blanking ot his flight demo machine at home. is that suspicious? >> again, you can speculate. there can be a motive that's benign or a more sinister motive. that's a key issue this week. >> mike chertoff, bob haiger, thank you for your perspective as the mystery continues as the search effort does. we'll keep tabs on it. i want to turn to the crisis in ukraine. russia is in control of crimea. tonight, president obama will depart for europe to try to

solidify support against vladimir putin. i spoke earlier to mike rogers, republican chairman of the house intelligence committee. he was in tbilisi, the capital of xwa ga. chairman rogers, welcome back to the program. i want to get to the crisis in ukraine. you've been there. let me start with the flight 370. you said last week based on the people you're talking to in our intelligence community, you think, unfortunately, this plane is at the bottom of the ocean. is that your view this morning? >> i think that's the highest probability, david. you can't take anything quite off the list yet but when you look at what is probable and what is plausible, it certainly rates as the probable. what they'll continue to do is try to identify every background on every passenger to make sure they're not missing it something and then they won't be able to put this case together until they find the aircraft. i do believe based on everything that i've seen so far, it is likely and probable that it crashed into the indian ocean. >> as you have been in ukraine

and are thinking about vladimir putin and russia, the mission of u.s. intelligence is to think about what happens next. so what is president putin going to do next? >> well, that's the big mystery, but i'll tell you that the ukrainians passionately believe that he will be on the move again in ukraine, especially in the east. and we have to think -- i think we're a bit removed from this, david. i talked to an individual who was kidnapped by the russians he believes. his ear was cut off. he had nails put in his hand and a crucifix type of position in order to get a confession from him that the americans were behind the upheaval in ukraine. and this is who we're dealing with. so they took over crimea. you see that they've taken over another base yet today. it certainly appears by everything that ukrainian intelligence officials believe, certainly u.s. intelligence officials believe, that putin is not done in ukraine.

so it is very troubling. he's put all military units he would need to move into ukraine on the eastern border. and is doing exercises. we see him moving forces in the south in a position where they could take the southern region over to moldova in the ukraine. and we see that he's actually working what they call soft power. he's got intelligence officials spread out all over the country causing problems in ukraine. >> do you think president obama has done enough to stop him? >> listen, i think americans are so far removed from this. we need to reengage in what is actually happening. you have individuals who are for independence and their own personal liberty fighting against a country that wants to take them over and one of the reasons they took to the streets in the beginning was corruption, oppressive corruption. i do think that we have to as americans have to take a tough stand with our european partners. there are things we can do that i think we're not doing. i don't think the rhetoric matches the reality on the

ground. you can do noncombatant military aid in a way that allows them to defend themselves. that's all they want. no direct military action. they don't want u.s. boots on the ground. neither do i. i don't think you do either nor does any other american. but what we can do is offer them things that they can use to really protect and defend themselves. i think that send a clear message. we're not talking about even complicated weapons systems. we're talking about small arms so they can protect themselves. maybe medical supplies, radio equipment that they can use to protect themselves. defensive posture weapons systems and you do that in conjunction with sanctions. now you've got something that says, mr. putin, we're done with you expanding into other countries. he goes to bed at night thinking of peter the great and he wakes up thinking of stalin. we need to understand who he is and what he wants. it may not fit with what we believe of the 21st century, but

that's not who he is and that's not what he's trying to accomplish. we need to be a little bit tougher with putin or he is going to continue to take territory to fulfill what he believes is rightfully russia. he gave a very inflammatory speech last tuesday that concerned certainly the people of the ukraine, all across, you know, this is region of the world, the european union, and it should concern the united states, as well. >> is a red line for the united states in your judgment our nato allies particularly the baltics if russia should cross that line? >> i think we need to act before that. it's too late. if he crosses into the baltics with military units, that is more than troubling. that means the country of georgia is likely more further invaded than it already is. it means he's taken land in the ukraine, the southern and

eastern portions of ukraine before i think he would do the baltacs. if it gets to the baltacs, we have allowed people who want to be free and independent who want to have self-determination and we've turned our back and walked away from them. you know, the world did that once. it was a major catastrophic. >> i want to touch on a couple other areas quickly. on the issue of the nsa surveillance and edward snowden, when you were last on this program, you were very pointed suggesting that he may have had help from the russians, that edward snowden may have been a russian spy. maybe a russian spy. he's called that absurd. no new details have come to light on this. were you irresponsible in making such a charge without having specific evidence to back it up to just sort of float that out there? >> well, first of all, i see all the intelligence and all the evidence from everything from his activities leading up to this event to very suspicious activity during the event. so when you talk to the folks doing the investigation, they cannot rule it out. so here's what we know, david. we know today no

counterintelligence official in the united states does not believe that mr. snowden, the nsa contractor, is not under the influence of russian intelligence services. we believe he is. i certainly believe he is today. now we all agree that he's under the influence of russian intelligence services today. for the investigators, they need to figure out, when did that influence start and was he interested in cooperating earlier than the timeline would suggest. so you're talking to a guy who stole information who is now in the arms of intelligence services saying, well, gosh, whatever you guys say is absurd. only i can define the truth. that's ridiculous on its face. i do believe there's more to this story. he is under the influence of russian intelligence officials today. he's actually supporting in an odd way this very activity of brazen brutality in expansionism of russia. he needs to understand that. i think americans need to understand that. we need to put it in proper context. >> what is the evidence that he is under that influence?

as is he has pointed out, why go to hong kong when he originally got to russia, he was stranded in the airport. that's no way to treat a spy. he has pointed out. you're arguing a lot. where is the evidence to suggest he's actually under the influence of a foreign intelligence agency? >> again, today, we believe he's under the influence and every counterintelligence official believes that. you won't find one who doesn't believe he's under the influence. that we can agree on. it's when he did that start that -- i think there is really good evidence, and this case is the more we look into this, the more you're going to find that that date gets further and further away from his story. matter of fact, i don't believe the story he tells about both the airport or his activities in hong kong are accurate. it just gets more complicated, and as i said, he's clearly in moscow under the influence of intelligence services for a country that is expanding its borders today using military

force. i think there's a lot more questions that need to be answered here. >> we're going to leave it there. chairman rogers, thank you as always. >> thank you, david. thanks for having me. our roundtable is here, david brooks of "the new york times," andrea mitchell, mayor of philadelphia michael nutter is here well and rich lowry, editor of the national review. welcome to all of you. i want to start with this crisis in the ukraine. and here's my question. what does it take for the u.s. to regain the upper hand in this fight with vladimir putin, david? >> fear. i think president obama has been quite good, quite aggressive, up front with the sanctions. the sanctions are beginning to hurt. there are two things they'll never do, overcome the russian mentality. they're thinking we handled stalingrad. we still won. we can endure a little economic suffering. second, the psychology of fear. who do you fear? the president has been very aggressive, predictable especially given our alliances. but does vladimir putin fear

barack obama? and to create that climate of fear, you have to do something aggressive, something that will get putin back on his heels. in this thing continues to escalate, i think the idea of arming ukraine, giving them weapons to have a deterrent effect is some place. >> nobody wants a shooting war in ukraine. if you're this administration, you don't want that. why? prospect of civil war, prospect of giving a cause celeb to the russian leader. what you want, the message is to have a strong, prosperous ukraine. that's the tough message to vladimir putin, isn't it? >> it is. a couple of things. our congress has still not voted even on the basic ukrainian economic package because of a dispute over the imf. unrelated. that sends a terrible be signal. i think the latest sanctions are beginning to hurt around that inner circle. but the weak link here is angela merkel, the germans and rest of the europeans who are reluctant to take tough steps.

they've been weak. so this coming week, how tough are the europeans willing to be? the russian army will use any pretext to roll thanks over the ukrainians. watching them digging trenches watch in eastern ukraine makes one think of world war i. >> it's interesting, too, to hear chairman rogers and his fear, a real fear that the intelligence committees have and community has and others that, in fact, vladimir putin won't stop in crimea. here's the cover of the in crimea. here's the cover of "the economist" magazine with the new world order that would only be complete with a shirtless photo of vladimir putin on top of the tank. but the new world order, rich, seems a lot like the old world order, like the 19th century world order where geography matters a great deal to keep some kind of ethnic and territorial upper hand over others. >> angela merkel said the famous remark she talked to putin and he was living in a different world. that's literally true. we thought we were living in a

post cold war world where everyone accepted basic international norms. he's living in a world where he can take territory through lies and force of arms. he's calibrating his next move right now based on what the west does. he's assuming the sanctions will be fairly anemic and eventually it will all be forgotten and he'll get another reset. we have to make it clear we have to do everything we can to buttress that new government in ukraine including arms and you have to have sanctions that really inflict severe pain. >> you're looking at this, no doubt, from the point of view of the president's domestic agenda going to the issues you're dealing with as a mayor every day. you look at a foreign policy crisis taking more and more time and effort away. do you worry about it impacting president obama's leadership in other areas? >> president obama can do many more things than one thing at a time. so he has an entire team. i think that the sanctions are starting to work as andrea said. you see what the u.n. security council did in terms of the resolution.

so the world is starting to come together around this particular issue. china was with us. russia is increasingly going to be isolated in this situation. so the president also looking at the domestic agenda listening to americans, i mean, most americans are really tired of war. don't necessarily want to be in this kind of conflict. so there is a balancing act here. >> this is what the world counts on. this is what putin is counting on. he made the same calculation in 2008 about president bush. but you know, it's interesting. think about the world when saddam hussein took over kuwait and that president bush said this not stand. the international world order was a very different thing. what does it take for the u.s. to singularly use its influence today as opposed to other years? >> people may say why do we care. it's far away. it's a country we don't know the much about it. rich alludes to the real problem. we had a post cold war era which

has not been great but it's been a lot better than the 19th century. you don't have the spheres of influence. russia can't say we control everything. we control everywhere where our people are. the second is you don't invade other countries breaking down the laws. it's complicated but you basically have some stability. and within that stability, you can have global trade, you can having free movement of people and putin is this radioactive individual who wants to create history, large ego, large russian nationalism he's whipped up around him. he is a threat to this order. that's why it matters to the economy, to the way the world conducts itself for a couple years. >> i think as the president embarks on this trip to see leaders in europe, in the middle east, i mean, we are not by ourselves. we cannot operate as if we're by ourselves. we may be -- but, i mean, there does -- again, there needs to be a coalition of nations that say we will not tolerate this kind of activity. where does it end? it does have an international impact.

it has impact here domestically, as well. we have to get things done in the united states at the same time. >> at the same time though, what we see with putin and david, you just alluded to it, is that he is now whipping up this nationalism which is very appealing to large parts of teeny sections of moldova which are saying we want to be russian, too. he could use the pretext of self-determination with these groups in eastern ukraine and elsewhere saying we want to be russian. and then what do we do? what does nato do? does nato do a so-called chapter five and take military action? >> there is another big issue here, domestically. we are now four years on to obamacare being passed. it was four years ago today president obama signed the affordable care act into law. we know this is a big political issue, rich. the issue is, are americans better off or worse off with obamacare in their life? >> what we know now, the law is not going to collapse of its own weight which seemed a real possibility when the launch was so botched. but i think it's still pretty

grim. if you believe the surveys of people who have signed up for the exchanges, most of them already had insurance which suggests what you basically have done is a churn where you've knocked people off their old insurance and gotten them on the exchanges. there's not much upside to that. this thing continues to be a political. >> mayor, are you proud of this law? >> very proud of it. rich, i wish had been with me yesterday. this is a philly centric panel. at 12th and market yesterday out with folks from get covered and enroll america, i walked up to people and asked them, do you have insurance? the answer was no in many, many, many cases. and these are individuals who are now getting affordable health insurance, have been to a number of these forums. $7, $18, $25 a month. 5 million people have now signed up. so people want health care.

>> it is shy of what they said the goal was. >> i understand that. you've got as many people as you can. the deadline is the 31st. folks should still continue to sign up. >> that's wonderful anecdotal -- >> it's not anecdotal. it's real. it was yesterday afternoon. >> are you aware of the surveys by consultancies and others that have asked people on the exchanges whether -- so it's anecdotal. the surveys suggest a lot of these people already had insurance. the fact is there are now republican alternatives that will probably cover more people than obamacare at a fraction of the cost, a fraction of the disruption. a fraction of the -- >> republicans spent more time not trying to undermine obamacare and 50 some odd votes. >> david, let me settle this. brotherly love here. >> you guys already have matching ties on. >> it's a philadelphia thing. >> you know, i sort of normally agree with them both a little. i do think it's -- as rich said, it's credibility. people are getting coverage.

there's no indication to me that the cost controls such as they were are going to have any bite at all. i do not think there will be an individual mandate. i don't think they're going to get enough young people to pay for the old people. we're going to get a program that will insure a lot of people chas positive good. >> andrea, what are the implications of the president deciding unilaterally how and when to implement aspects of obamacare? if a republican president were being this selective about the law, there would be an outcry on the part of those who were supporters of obamacare. >> i think that is one thing that undermines his case against the republicans in congress, stop messing around with the law. what he has said from the beginning is fix the problems and they did these endless useless votes to try to eliminate the law which they knew they weren't going to win. for him to now be unilaterally saying we're not going to implement this and that, it does undermine his case. he issued a statement today saying this is the fourth

anniversary and costs have come down, some of those costs would have come down in nene case because of the continuing slow recovery. >> a political question. the conventional wisdom is if were a republican, this is a slam-dunk just to foreshadow my coming debate about college sports. this is slam-dunk for you in the midterms. what's the other side of that? where should republicans be cautious about the argument about obamacare in the fall? >> i do think it's a slam-dunk. it motivates the republican base. at the same time it has appeal to the center. anytime you have an issue like that, that's a winner. i do think there's a danger in a monomaniacal focus on obamacare to the exclusion of everything else. the republicans don't have to have an agenda on everything else. i think they should be making the case comprehensively against the president's agenda and come up with possible alternatives. >> obamacare is here to stay. as a consecutive commentator, is that your view looking at this? >> no. >> you doan believe that? >> i think the law has had legitimacy problems since the begin. if you get unified control, republican control of government

in 2017 which is possible, this thing will be repealed. >> mayor? >> that will be very interesting. as you know obviously we have a slight difference of opinion. >> just a slight. >> just a little. >> david could work it out. don't worry. the mediator. >> but you know again, all the time again andrea mentioned the wastes effort on all of these votes when there are still people hungry in this country, people who needs jobs, workforce development training, all of these votes against the supplemental food program, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, the party of no needs to step up to the plate and have real ideas that deal with real people every day all across the united states and america. >> obamacare alternative in the senate. >> that's all they want to talk about. >> there are other alternatives. >> the final point is -- >> republicans and democrats as they look for the midterms, it was a republican base such as it was that came out in a florida congressional district and not the democratic base. there is no motivating force for democrats to vote in the midterms but republicans the

passionate are. >> i'm going to make that the last word. thank you all very much for the matching ties. you're off to the vatican, mayor. >> i am. >> safe travels. that will be an interesting trip. we look forward to hearing about it. we'll take a break here. coming up, a special debate this morning over an issue that involves fairness and the multibillion dollar business of college sports. is it time for college athletes to be paid? a special debate coming up after the break. it's a growing trend in business: do more with less with less energy. hp is helping ups do just that. soon, the world's most intelligent servers, designed by hp, will give ups over twice the performance, using forty percent less energy. multiply that across over a thousand locations, and they'll provide the same benefit to the environment as over 60,000 trees. that's a trend we can all get behind.

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coming up, pay for play. the president of the ncaa and two former college athletes who have made careers in washington, former player reggie love and education secretary arne duncan on whether it's time to pay college athletes. runny nose. [ sniffles ] i better take something. [ male announcer ] dayquil cold and flu doesn't treat all that. it doesn't? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms plus has a fast-acting antihistamine. oh, what a relief it is!

welcome back. as much excitement is created by this college basketball tournament, there is a big baebt in college sports.

should athletes be paid? a new poll out this morning suggests 64% of the public opposes paying players with only 33% in favor. but there is some momentum behind a string of lawsuits against the ncaa pushing for greater commercial rights for the athletes. and here to debate the issue are reggie love who played football and basketball for duke on the championship team back in 2001 before becoming a personal aid to president obama. mark emmert is, of course, the president of the ncaa, and we're very pleased to have you on a big day for march madness here in our studio. of course, secretary of education arne duncan who himself played basketball for harvard and much to the delight of my son was this is year's mvp in the nba celebrity all-star game. arme, you made big news at home. welcome to all of you. this is a -- it's a controversial issue. it gets to be a heated issue. i want to frame it this way. this is a comment from jeffrey kesler who is the lawyer representing some of the athletes and he laid out the issue this way. the one thing people should recognize is how fundamentally unfair it is to look at a team

in the ncaa tournament where the coach is making $5 million, the school is generating hundreds of millions, sponsors are cashing in, administrators are cashing in and the only group not receiving any benefit are these athletes. most of who -- it was a typo there, not on our part -- most of who will not graduate and most of who will never be a professional athlete. this is their one opportunity to be recognized and compensated. so president emmert, why isn't this unfair not to compensate these athletes who are creating so much value? >> i think mr. kesler and a variety of other people have framed this question completely wrong. basically, what is being argued here is should student under athletes whether they're basketball players or any other sport be unionized, employees of a university or is this fundamentally about students playing the game and receiving the most important thing that's going to set them up the rest of their life, a good, sound

education and the opportunity to get that education? obviously, universities and colleges believe that these are student athletes, that these are young men and women who should continue to be students and not be unionized employees. those are two very different -- >> let me get reggie love who has a different view. the argument here is that mark is underlining is the student part of student athlete. isn't there some myths associated with that, that this is an amateur athletic experience? >> look, when you look at the coaches' salaries and you look at the amount of money that universities are able to bring in from alumni, obviously, college sports is a business. and that being said, i think it's hard to say that every mayor should be paid for their participation and a specific dollar amount. but i do think that student athletes are a key partner in the ecosystem, and there should be the opportunity to build long-term value. it shouldn't just be about athletic development, but it should be about athletic, professional, and personal development. these kids are 18, 19.

>> they're not partners now is is the issue. they're not partners. they create so much of the revenue, but they're not actually partners in this business. to suggest it's not a business when you're making almost a billion dollars in tv revenue most of which comes from march madness strikes a lot of people as disingenuous. >> a lot of confusion where that money goes. what that money's all about. absolutely march madness generates a lot of revenue. that revenue is used to support all the other tournaments, divisions one, two, and three. it's a young man, young women playing golf, volleyball, lacrosse, ice hockey, all of those tournaments, everything that goes on in college sport is supported by the revenue that comes out of march madness. so the vast majority of the revenue flows into the ncaa, goes right out to the universities either directly or indirectly through the support of these championships. the money's not going to colleges, and they're sitting on it. it's supporting 450,000 kids. it's a big amount of money.

>> arne duncan, you're a former player, the secretary of education. you have a more nuanced view about all of this. >> these are complex and important issues. david, this one is personal for me. i grew up playing on the south side of chicago. many guys i played with looked up to went to universities. paid a lot of money for the universities. never got their degree. came back home with nothing to show for it and there was something fundamentally unfair for that. for me the real care is we have to change is the structure so graduation rates are the most important thing and to be the ncaa's credit they've raised the bar. the university of connecticut who won the national championship couldn't compete the following year because their graduation rate was so low and now they have made significant changes. new president, new coach, new a.d. guess what, the students are doing better. the most important thing we can do is help them get that degree. over their lifetime, their

earnings a million dollars more than that. the incentive structures have to be changed so much more of their compensation is based not upon wins and losses but around academic performance and graduation. university presidents and boards have been very come place ept and soft on this issue. you have to look at the leadership of universities here. >> one of the aspects of the unfairness piece of this was captured in a tweet, reggie, that we found. a sports columnist for the "l.a. times" bill plaschke tweeted this over the weekend "there are no planned meals for the teams on the off day. should a team wish to have a meal at his own cost, it can make arrangements. the follow-up tweet was this. my previous tweet was copied from an ncaa memo found at the san diego tourney site. they can't even feed the kids that are making them billions. there is not even a stipend that has been agreed to to be able to support kids who even beyond the scholarship can't pay for some of their basic necessities like food when they're creating so much value.

>> yeah, i think, look, you get a range of student athletes who come into a university. you have kids who come from great families and have tons of resources and you have kids who come from not much and don't have the ability to buy a suit or a laptop or to do any of the participate in a lot of the fundamental things that are required to be a student athlete or be a student. i think the ncaa has done some very good things in terms of making more resources available to kids who need these resources, but i do think that, you know, there are additional things that could be done to give kids an additional opportunity to -- >> make the case. what would you see? >> like i think an educational trust. i just got out of graduate school, right? i think that, you know, graduate school cost me almost 200,000 bucks. i think every student athlete who plays for a university should be able to go to the university.

assuming that they can do the work, they should be able to be educated, graduate school. >> i think that's really important. people talk about helping them graduate from college. yes, they should do that. but mba, masters, ph.d. having some ability for the rest of your life to go back and get education, that's something worth considering. some folks are talking about the medical expenses long-term. that's a fair question on the table. but this chance to continue your education not just for a couple years while you're competing but for much longer beyond that. >> what about the stipend issue? look, you put this to a vote as i understand it, and the schools didn't agree. some of the smaller schools rather vetoed the idea of a nominal stipend to help family members get to games, to help some of these athletes with their basics. >> all of these issues we're discussing right now are not only good topics it discuss but are fair and appropriate things to do that are being aggressively debated right now inside the ncaa. as most people know the rules of the ncaa aren't made by me but the members themselves.

and we have twice now had the board of the ncaa pass an allowance to allow schools to provide a couple of thousand dollars in what we call miscellaneous expense allowances. the kind of things you were just discussing. the board's in favor of it. the membership, the more than a thousand colleges and universities that are out there, the 350 of them that are in division i voted that down. we're in the middle right now of reconsidering all that. i have every reason to believe that's going to be in place sometime this coming year. >> what's the doomsday scenario? what would be so wrong if, let's say, you had -- "time" magazine suggested this. you had a pool of money, a cap say and that you could decide to pay the athletes a certain amount. what's the doomsday scenario in your view? >> there's two parts of it. the first is, are you taking students and converting them to employees? that's what the northwestern debate is about. >> they want to unionize there. >> they want to unionize. you have to say these are employees. if you're going to do that, it completely changes the relationship.

i don't know why you would want them to be students if they're employees and playing basketball for you, don't let calculus get in the way. >> the common sense middle ground in all these things, making students are fed, making sure if there's an emergency at home and mom gets very sick or dad passes away, they have the ability to get home and attend the funeral. you have some students show up with one little bag of clothes, all they have in the world. there's some things you can do there. thinking about the students long-term benefits for the rest of hair life which has to be on the educational side. the problem out there, david, for too many young men in particular talkinging about march madness think they're going to grow up and play in the nba. the vast majority aren't. half of division ii basketball players think they're going to the nba. we have to get the idea case that dream but catch an education and use sports as a

vehicle to get an education which sets you up for the rest of your life and changes your family's prospects forever. >> the secretary is -- i think the secretary's just spot on with all of that. the game-changer in life for all of us is getting an education, a real valid will legitimate education. making sure that they can doing that without having to worry about the costs and how it's going to be paid for, making a commitment to a lifetime education, i think makes great sense. reggie's right on that, as well. i do want to correct one point though. we don't have student athletes that are going without but the meals. they get tuition fees, room and board, books and supplies. they can get a laptop from the athletic department, a suit and tie if the athletic department, a flight home for an emergency. so it's a very different world than it was five years ago. >> you're saying the education is spot on. the reality is, there is an element of professionalizing this. if my son wants a villanova jersey with josh hart's name on it, that's against the rules. i can buy a jersey with number three on it and he's happy because he knows what that means. you're using the likeness of these players in video games and marketing them to kids.

you're professionalizing this. i don't read a lot of stories about johnny manziel and what he wants to do after football if he's not drafted. there is this professional element. i guess what i'm asking you is, when's the compromise? what can you commit to say, we can close this gap a little bit? >> the gap needs to be closed around the context of being a student at a university. so if we provide, the ncaa members, universities and colleges provide, a young man or young woman with all the expenses they have, legitimate expenses as a student athlete, including this so-called stipend, that extra amount of money makes great sense and it would be very valuable to the students, provide them with that, from vid provide them with a commitment for lifelong education at least to finish the bachelor's degrees. they want to come back and finish, great. let them come back and finish making sure they have the resources available to be successful so they're the set up for the rest of their life. >> that's half the battle. the other half i want to emphasize is the incentives for coaches are basically all wrong now.

tom mcmillan, rhodes scholar, played in the nba, has done fantastic work in terms of coaches' compensation. he looked at a number of contracts. the dollar value was $11 for wins in terms of additional bonuses and $1 for academic performance. we see that place after place after place. for me, there should be a threshold academically. if students aren't performing at that the coaches shouldn't get anything. if coaches are doing the wrong thing and cheating the penalties should need to follow the coaches. >> ten seconds left. >> the incentives are misaligned. but i do think that there are some great coaches out there who are committed to the university who are committed to the men and women on their teams, but you know, i think there are also some bad apples out there, as well. there are a lot of folks out there who look at this as a business and their main point is how can i get paid. and if coaches have that attitude, it's hard for players not to have that attitude. a great example, you look at tickets to a basketball game at a university.

definitely commercialized. a student athlete can't go out and sell his ticket that he gets as a student athlete at market value. but a university can tie a $10,000 alumni check to a season ticket holder. they can get more than market value as a university for those tickets. but there's nothing in place that says a student shouldn't -- that a student shouldn't do that, as well. >> we're going to leave the debate there. it will continue to go on. mark emmert in particular, thank you for being here when you're so busy with march madness. >> my pleasure. >> the two of you, as well. thank you for being here, very much. next, andrea mitchell talks to former president jimmy carter and he doesn't mince words about his relationship with president obama. coming up. >> does the president ask you for advice? do you have that kind of relationship? does he call you? >> unfortunately, the answer is no. president obama doesn't.

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for a body in motion. we're back. andrea mitchell back with me now. earlier this week, you had a chance to sit down exclusively with former president jimmy carter. >> that's right. i spoke with him at the carter center in atlanta about his new book, "a call to action: women, religion, violence and power." we also talked about the crisis in ukraine as well as his distant relationship with president obama. >> why did you choose this time to focus on women and the way women are victimized around the world? >> for the last three years, we've been concentrating on the relationship between religion on the one hand and the abuse of women and girls on the other. existing abuse of females is the worst and most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on earth. that is derived i would say indirectly from the fact that

religious leaders say women are inferior in the eyes of god which is a false interpretation of the holy scriptures but when they see that the pope and the southern baptist convention and others say that women can't serve as priests equally with men they say i'll treat my wife the way i want to because she's inferior to me. >> you and rosalynn carter left your own congregation because of the way your church was treating women. >> convention decided in its annual meeting to require that women be subserviant their husbands and women could no longer serve is an a pastor or priest or even as a deacon. those kind of things convinced me i should change. >> another institution you were very much part of was the military. the naval academy. and why do you think it is that the pentagon is so resistant to changing and reforming the way sexual assaults are handled in the military? >> exactly the same thing

happens in universities in america as happens in the military. because presidents of universities and colleges and commanding officers don't want to admit that under their leadership sexual abuse is taking place. so rapists prevail because they know that they're not going to be reported. >> i want to ask you about foreign policy given all of your expertise. it was actually on "meet the press" in 1980 that you said we would not go to the olympics because of the soviet invasion of afghanistan. >> it's very important for the world to realize how serious a threat the soviets invasion of afghanistan is. >> now we have this situation with ukraine. what advice would you give in dealing with vladimir putin? >> i think there has to be a concerted international prohibition against putin going any further than crimea. >> does the president ask you for advice? >> unfortunately, the answer is no.

president obama doesn't. but previous presidents have called on me and the carter center to take action. >> why do you think you don't have that relationship with barack obama? >> i -- that's a hard question for me to answer, you know, with complete candor. i think the problem was that in dealing with the issue of peace between israel and egypt, the carter center has taken a very strong and public position of equal treatment between the palestinians and israelis. and i think this was a sensitive area in which the president didn't want to be involved. when he first came out with his speech in cairo calling for the end of all settlements and he later said that the '67 borders would prevail, he and i were looking at it from the same perspective. but i can understand those sensitivities and i don't have any criticism of it.

>> there's been a lot of criticism of his policy regarding drones and the nsa surveillance and the nsa. it has argued that this kind of intelligence gathering is critical to try to protect the american homeland. >> that has been extremely liberalized and abused by our own intelligence agencies. i have felt that my own communications were probably monitored. and when i want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, i type or write the letter myself, put it in the post office and mail it. >> old-fashioned snail mail. >> yeah, because i believe if i sent an e-mail, it will be monitored. >> i just wanted to ask finally, with all your energy, what keeps you going? what is the secret, the magic of jimmy carter? >> well, it's no magic involved. my wife and i have been lucky enough to be leaders of the carter center promoting peace, enhancing democracy. it's unpredictable. it's adventurous. and i have to say it's gratifying and exciting for us still to do that.

>> great interview. andrea, final note here in our remaining seconds. our discussion on paying college athletes has already provoked some lively debate on twitter. susan tweeted to #"meet the press" pay college players? absolutely not. let their pay fund other students' education. but ryan carrier disagrees tweeting that college athletes should be paid. they bring in millions to all the universities, $913 million in 2013. great subject #meet the press. quick views on this, mayor? >> i'd be against that but i'm focused on taking care of the student athlete. and their academics, graduation, other educational opportunities and i do like the idea about using more of those dollars generated for financial aid. >> all right. that's the only response we have time for you. >> thank you all. >> i've got to the say go uva. >> right. thank you very much to our roundtable. i'm going to be on vacation next week. my friend nbc's political director chuck todd will be filling in for me.

that is all for us today. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." -- www.vitac.com very big ocean. there will be an amount of luck involved. >> we have a job and really keen that we can just continue. >> the search will continue. we'll continue as long as there's hope. >> holding out hope for mh-370. good afternoon to you all. i'm t.j. holmes. craig melvin is off today. you're watching msnbc. the french say they have a new lead from their satellites. and that has now reenergized the search more than two weeks after the flight vanished. >> we need to be a little bit tougher with this -- with putin or he is going to continue to take territory. >> so important that we take