Show Me the Money: Is it College Athlete Payday?

Should college athletes be getting paid? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice investigate this hotly debated question alongside author Ellen Staurowsky, EdD, and economist Andrew Zimbalist, PhD.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, also serving as your host. We're coming to you from my office at the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History. And in this episode of Sports StarTalk, I've got my two co-hosts, Gary O'Reilly. Gary? Hey. Dude. Good to be here. In the house. Chuck Nice. Hello. In the house. Yes. You know what today's topic is? It is college athletics. Now, why should that, why should we care in this particular moment? California recently signed into a law, signed into law, the power of students to be, to profit from endorsements, to basically become pro.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In these ways that pros have always made money. So this has sent a ripple across the country. So it's interesting, whether or not there's money, it might be interesting of how much money there is. If there is money, is it a little, so it's just gesture money? Is it a lot to completely remap the landscape of college sports and quote amateur sports? So we need more expertise than what we have here to address this. So we have on video Dr. Ellen Staurowsky. Ellen, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Well, I'm happy to be here.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so let me get your ID correct here. You're a professor of sports management at Drexel University, and in particular, you have expertise and interest in social justice issues in sport, and you recently co-authored a paper, "The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sports." Where would a paper like that get published?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  That was actually a report that we did for the National College Players Association.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Cool. And what is the price of poverty in big time?

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Well, for Division One football player, it's about 700,000. For a Division One basketball player, it's about 1.5 million.

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Whoops. Wait, are you saying that would be their share of the total revenue that otherwise is changing hands to watch them play?

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Yes, and those were dollars from 2015. So we're trying to update that study. So it's going to be more than that in today's dollars.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Wait, but wait a minute. But I don't watch college football to watch every player on the field. Usually, there's a few marquee players that are attracting me to that, to my eyeballs, to the ads of the show. So what would it mean to say that's how you would evenly divide it when probably that's not how it would actually happen in practice?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I mean, in theory, if we were to have a fair market for college athletes, we would also have a players association to go along with that, which is desperately needed. And so we would have a situation where we would have collective bargaining, which would establish some kind of a baseline in terms of what players would be, what might expect. And then beyond that, that's where you would see marquee players getting more and players who are really on the journey getting, you know, getting a baseline amount.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this would be like a players' union, is what you're saying?

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, or a trade association.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Association, yeah. You guys have some questions?

• 3:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, we do. Professor, is this move where you see finances come into college athletics, is that really just going to enable the larger athletic programs and to the detriment of the smaller colleges?

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, there's a lot of conversation about that right now. And in terms of what the California bill... Is addressing the California bill is really interesting from the standpoint that it's not talking about dollars that exist within college athletic programs.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  It's talking about the opportunity of individual athletes to benefit off of their names, images, and likenesses. And as a result of that, what I think we can see, and what we're beginning to understand just even in the passage of the bill, is that the value of athletes is far more than what people really, really think about. So that if you look at a gymnast like UCLA's Kaitlyn Ohashi, who was a viral sensation back last spring, she had no opportunity to monetize off of that popularity that she yielded from those viral moments.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  And so, you know, that's a sport where there's a kind of a doomsday prediction that if we open up the market, that these sports are going to be hurt. But the plain fact of the matter is that they're in the social media age where we know that young people have the opportunity to be social influencers. There are all manner of things that they could be involved in that they're prevented from doing because of NCAA rules.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this goes beyond the concept of a players association because now they'd be monetizing their value outside of the school system in ways that has nothing to do with their actual performance on the field.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct. And the other piece of the California bill is it would provide for athletes to have the opportunity to have an agent or a representative.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 5:38Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's what's key.

• 5:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Chuck Nice?

  So how does this kind of relate or kind of hearken back to when Olympic players were supposedly all amateurs?

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  And it's like, okay, you can't be pro and be Olympic. And then what you started seeing was you would have the Olympic player on the Wheaties box, which was the very first way they made money.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Chuck Nice?

  Which is what's happening to these. Players, now you see Olympic players who are able to monetize their name and likeness to an extent where it becomes an entire cottage industry, ala, what's the guy that swims? What's the big swimmer? Phelps. Michael Phelps, ala Michael Phelps. So, you know, are we looking at that kind of similar track for these NCAA athletes?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  I think we are, and I think what, to me, what you're asking about is sort of the fallacy of amateurism.

• 6:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  That the world is not going to come to an end if athletes begin to get paychecks, if they begin to have their value recognized. Walter Byers, who was the executive director of the NCAA, you know, kind of famously said that amateurism was a tool of control. And he's right about that, that it was economic camouflage for an exploitative system. And that really is what it's about. It's really more about a narrative rather than being, and a rule structure that controls players. It's not really about this ideal that we sort of have come to think that it is.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, plus, plus Chuck, in many of the examples you gave, they would go on the Wheaties box, Wheaties box only after they performed in the Olympics as amateurs. In the old days.

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  In the old days, yeah.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They transitioned to that.

• 7:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than did that en route.

• 7:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, and then when it got completely open, I mean, what, for me, the birth date of that was when the NBA started playing in the Olympics.

• 7:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah. That was it. That's when it was over.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that was it. Clearly, we're done here.

• 7:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, you touched on the female gymnast who wasn't able to monetize, and you've made me think, if this pattern comes through and it gets spread across the country, just how will it impact female athletes in college programs?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  I think it really has the potential to allow for much more mobility within the market than what we see right now. And it's an interesting year for us to be talking about this because of the women's national team, the women's soccer national team, that really captured everybody's imagination. But all along the way with women's sports, we see over and over and over again, epiphanies that women's sports are interesting and exciting, that they are a tremendous commercial entity. And I think that in college sport, for so long, we've had people who've just said, well, women's sports aren't that important. Nobody's really interested in them. Nobody's going to invest in them. And I think by expanding

• 8:41Speaker 01

  the market, what we're going to see is we're going to see that that there's been kind of a suppression of this entire system. The system that's exploited male athletes has famously also been discriminatory in terms of women. And it all comes down to sort of the same root cause, which is about economic power. I think these laws are actually going to impact the sport industry in an important way in terms of women, and in a positive way in terms of women.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  Do you think it'll be positive in terms of exposure for different sports? You know, for instance, I would say the Williams sisters kind of elevated women's tennis to a superstar type level. You know, you had superstars before them, but you never had the interest in women's tennis the way you did after these individual players took such prominence. So do you think that could happen for women's sports on the college level if you see a certain, you know, rise of individuals who, you know, gather a following? Does that help everybody? Or does it just help the person who's like, I'm famous now, you know?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know there's a real fear about that, right? That somehow if we have some people who are famous and we've got other people who aren't, that's going to hurt the system. But I mean, when you look across all forms of entertainment, you see that there are differences in terms of celebrity levels. So I think that we're going to see an elevation of the entire system if we do this. And if we look at, you know, if we look at the NBA, for example, a lot of those teams pretty much key off of a couple of meet marquee players. And there's a lesson to be learned there because we follow teams that we know, the personalities are, we know. And so in terms of women's sports, the more you can market women and have them be familiar to a viewing audience, the more likely that audience is going to grow.

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, with tennis being a solo performing sport, Right. you're not mixed in with the whole team and have to figure out who's who and It's already individualistic. It's already individual. You get the focus built into the sport itself. Right, right.

• 10:50Gary O'Reilly?

  There's a finite pool of money in terms of the brands and who would be endorsing a college program. And it's historically gone to the college program. Now they're going to look at it being diverted into the hands of the athletes. They're not going to take that lying down, are they? There's got, there must be some kind of pushback. And do you actually see this ending up in court where the college programs fight back against the athletes?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, and there's been an epic battle going on that way for many, many years, just to your point, you know, the abandoned versus NCAA case had to do with the fact that the NCAA was stripping the athletes' rights for endorsements. And we see several other lawsuits right now that are building on the outcome of the ban. And so the NCAA has very much actively tried to prevent this kind of thing from happening. But I think what we're really talking about here is a 21st century view of college sport, that this is a multi-billion dollar industry that sport nation as a whole, from youth sport all the way through, youth sport is a $15 billion industry.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  So, so we have these very archaic governance structures that, that really need to come into the 21st century. And in the, in the process, stop stripping athletes of fundamental rights that, that every other citizen in the United States would otherwise have. That's how I'd respond to that.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a, a quick question. When you look at baseball, baseball has a farm system. There's A, double A, triple A baseball, and they're all professional. And they feed the pros. And that's a time honored system. When you think about modern football, the NFL just sits there, fat and happy, waiting for an entire other system to develop their players that they then recruit. Can you foresee a future where the, where college athletics is not really part of college? It's just a farm system for the NFL or for the NBA? Can you foresee an analog to that as emerging from this kind of change?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think in some ways, the, the college system really is the developmental league in terms of the NFL. And I would say that there's been collusion at the top, you know? From the standpoint that if you look at the NCAA and, and if you look at the NBA, for example, and the one and done rule, you know, that rule, while it's an NBA rule, is something that is really negotiated between the head of the NCAA and the NBA. But there's, there's no player rep at the table on that. There's already this unrecognized developmental system in place. And I think what will happen over time, I, I hope, is that we'll get more, we'll get better at naming things for what they are.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  And what we'll have as an outcome is we'll have a fairer system, we'll also have a safer system. You know, we've got athletes who are competing at the college level who don't have the benefit of kind of healthcare that they should. Your listeners may be familiar with Jordan McNair's story, the young man from Maryland football that tragically passed away for, flat out for negligence. If we recognize this workplace as a, as a workplace that requires that there be player advocacy, then I think we go a long way towards addressing all these other issues.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or in the limit that the, the NFL feeds money into the college system, knowing that that's the feeder system for them into the college athletics.

• 14:27Chuck Nice?

  Could be, yeah.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. We gotta wrap it, we gotta wrap it up. So, thank you very much for being on StarTalk. And it's good to know that you're out there and we'd like to keep you in our rolodex because we'll probably hit this topic more in the future with your permission.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  It's been a real pleasure.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, when we return, more on the moving frontier of money in college athletics on StarTalk.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Sports Edition. We've got on private video channel. Who do we have? Andrew Zimbalist. Andrew, welcome to StarTalk.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Good to be with you. Thank you.

• 15:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, fans of sports and money and the business of college sports will all know your two books, one from early 2000s, Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports. You're just looking for trouble. And just a couple of years ago, Unwinding Madness: What Went Wrong with College Sports and How to Fix It. You are the man for this segment because we want to know, what are we to think about these recent trends? And I guess California is leading these trends. What do they do? They passed a law that allows college athletes to profit from endorsements.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, where do you fit? This sounds like that's exactly what you've been trying to get to have happen for two decades now.

• 16:18Speaker 04

  Okay, well, first of all, as most things in the world, this is really a very complicated matter, and I don't think that there are simple solutions. But California, once again, is leading the United States in progressive change. What actually happened is Governor Newsom, at the end of September, signed a bill that made it illegal for California's colleges to prohibit athletes from receiving publicity rights income. Or sometimes called names, images and likenesses income. So that means that they can now enter into endorsement contracts. They can sign contracts with video game companies, um, which will use their avatars to produce video games and basketball or football. They can do a number of things.

• 17:00Speaker 04

  Some of them potentially can be earning tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from this. More, more typically, the college athletes uh won't be earning a lot of money. But this opens up at least one avenue whereby the college athletes can be remunerated for their talents. Of course, the NCAA going back to two nineteen oh five, when it was started, has proclaimed amateurism to be the rule of the day, not allowing students to receive pay directly for their athletic abilities.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, the concept of being an amateur used to carry quite a bit of currency in decades past. For example, Olympic athletes, you had to be an amateur. That was the whole thing. And somehow you were tainted if you were professional. We are so past that culturally, emotionally, um, internationally, that isn't it about time that such a change has occurred?

• 17:54Speaker 04

  Well, so the, the Olympics began in the nineteen eighties to open that up. And in nineteen ninety-two, they passed a blanket rule that said athletes can be paid. We're not playing the amateurism game anymore. I, I think one of the reasons why this is more complicated in college sports is that college sports are college and the sports part is supposed to be extracurricular and the athletes are supposed to be students first and be getting an education first.

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Says who?

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, what a crazy idea. Where'd you come up with that notion? Uh, you know, so when we talk about athlete exploitation, it's really happening, I think, on two different levels. One is that the vast, the overwhelming vast majority of the athletes in FBS, which is the top level of football and division one basketball, the overwhelming majority of those athletes are being cheated out of an education. They're, they're being exploited. They're being offered an education. They're being told that the scholarship that they get that might be on the market might be worth fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year, that they're getting that for free. That's supposed to come with an education. So they're not getting that, the vast majority of them. That's problem number one. Problem number two is that college sports has become, as everybody knows, unbelievably

• 19:06Speaker 04

  commercialized. You have college coaches, you have dozens of college coaches getting over five million dollars a year. Keep in mind that a typical college president might be getting $500,000 or $600,000 a year, let alone what us lowly professors might be getting paid. These college coaches are making out like bandages. The assistant coach, many assistant coaches these days, getting millions of dollars. Conference commissioners are getting paid millions of dollars. So there are a lot of, there are a lot of older white males, and sometimes these days, minority males as well, who are doing very well on the top of the system. And the college athletes, the ones who are producing the product, are not getting paid. Now, so the question is, should we abandon amateurism altogether and just kind of make

• 19:50Speaker 04

  it into professional sports? Or should we do something else? If you believe in the college model, and we're still enveloped by the college model, then I think we have to find some compromises that will allow athletes to be paid for certain things, but not others. This, this new bill in California, and by the way, there are now 28 states that are, have they either introduced such a bill, or are about to introduce the bill. And there's, there are two bills in the US House of Representatives, and another one that Senator Murphy and Senator Romney are working on in the Senate. And the question is, what, what is it that we mean by an amateur, really? We shouldn't let the NCAA define amateurism for us, because they change their mind every two or three years, what amateurism means.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  And I can, if we had a few hours, I can go over every single change they've made, going back to 1905. We don't have the time. But amateurism, I think fundamentally means you do an activity for the love of the activity, that comes from the Latin amateur, which means to love. And if, if we're talking about amateurism in that sense, which I think is the common use of the term, then we should say, athletes shouldn't be paid a salary, they're not employees, they're students, they shouldn't be paid a salary for what they do on the basketball court or the football field. But- If there's a third party that wants to employ them to use their fame, their notoriety to promote a product or something else, then that's not getting paid for playing the game.

• 21:14Speaker 04

  And that's, that should be allowed. So I think we have to work on the margins here to preserve the basic model. Now, if that's not good enough, if there's still people who are going to cry there's terrible exploitation going, then we should just professionalize it. We should take college sports at the top level and make it into minor league basketball and minor league football.

• 21:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's break down some numbers if we can.

• 21:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a former professional footballer in the UK.

• 21:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, and I, and I skipped the college scenario, went straight into professional soccer at the age of 18. You're like a LeBron James. Look at you. Aren't I? All LeBron.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  This was before the Bowman decision.

• 21:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah, way, way back in the day.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Because looking at you, you look like you probably were playing last year.

• 21:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, you're my new best, you're my new best friend. What can I say? So are we going to make any substantial difference to a college athlete's life with the sort of figures that could potentially come into their lives? Well, what are those figures? Yeah. What, what are the figures that could potentially come into their lives?

• 22:14Speaker 04

  So we have, we have college coaches, as I mentioned before, who are getting paid seven, eight, nine million dollars a year. Plus, they're allowed to earn outside income. Plus, they have perquisites galore. And you, you have, you have the top 10 football teams in college football today, each one of them earning 130 million dollars and above, all the way up to over 200 million dollars. College basketball is much lower. There you're talking about 20, 30, 40 million dollars at the top level. How much are these athletes worth? Well, at the pro level, practically all the pro leagues in the United States, the athletes get roughly 50% of the revenue. So if the athletes were to get 50% of this amount of revenue that are being generated, this star quarterback and the star halfback and linebacker and so on, they'd be getting a million, two, three million dollars.

• 22:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Now, keep in mind, by the way, keep in mind that at the top football, at the top football level, you have 85 scholarship athletes. How many of them are actually playing during the course of the year? Probably thirty or forty of them. The NFL has forty-five active people on their rosters. So the vast majority of people, actually, who are on college football teams and college basketball teams are getting a scholarship and they're not playing. They wouldn't be getting anything in an open market. So they're actually getting, they're actually exploiting the college. They're getting a scholarship worth seventy thousand dollars, give or take, and they're not contributing anything, except maybe as foils during practices or whatever. We're really talking about a handful of players on the leading football teams and the leading

• 23:41Speaker 04

  basketball teams who are actually financially being exploited. But they are indeed, because they're getting scholarships, fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars in value. They're not getting an education, so it's questionable whether they're getting any value there at all. And their probable, what economists call marginal revenue product or value of output that they produce, has got to be over a million, maybe over two or three million dollars in some cases.

• 24:03Chuck Nice?

  So now, when you look at team sports, I mean, is it fair to take the one person who is an outstanding player, compensate them for their efforts, but yet you have somebody else on the team who perhaps the team cannot function without, but not as integral? Would, what do you do?

• 24:23Speaker 04

  Like the center for the quarterback.

• 24:24Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, okay, yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  The center for the quarterback, that center protects the quarterback. But the center's not on the cover of Sports Illustrated. It's the quarterback.

• 24:31Chuck Nice?

  So what do you do about creating some type of economic parity between the players who are elite and the players who are playing a role?

• 24:43Speaker 04

  Ooh, good question. So that's the same problem that you have at the professional level, right? The difference at the professional level is you have collective bargaining. Collective bargaining establishes minimum levels of salary, so that, for instance, everybody in the NFL is getting at least four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Everybody in Major League Baseball is getting at least five hundred and fifty thousand. So the union has bargained for that. And they also bargain for intermediate levels. In the NBA, they have something called the exceptions. They used to have a Larry Bird exception. They still have that. They have other level, mid-level exceptions and so on, to make sure that there are enough people who are getting paid. Very high salaries by normal standards, but again, not so high by NBA standards. They're getting three, four million dollars a year. So you have that at the pro levels. What do you do at the college level?

• 25:26Speaker 04

  It's a very, very good question because at the college level, we don't have and cannot have collective bargaining. The reason is that of the 129 teams at the highest level in Division One that play football at the top level, there are 111 teams that are public universities. The National Labor Relations Act doesn't cover the public sector. It only covers the private sector. So you can't have collective bargaining in 111 of the teams unless you have special state rules that are passed. Most states don't allow public employees to strike or to collectively bargain. So there's, there's not an easy solution. Some kind of legislation that would establish it, not collective bargaining might be the way to go, but we're, we're a long way away from that. Well, but you're the economist, come up with something.

• 26:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 26:11Speaker 04

  I have some great ideas, but I'm not going to give them to you for free. He said, I am an economist.

• 26:18Gary O'Reilly?

  So, I mean, for me, I would say, put it in a trust fund and at the end of that athlete's college education, they're able to access that and move on. So that possibly is a solution.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  They need to be average.

• 26:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Right? So now I have agents and lawyers because there's money and college athletes can't have agents? Is that right?

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Well, no, now they're allowed to. Now they're allowed to.

• 26:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so that's.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  The NCAA has made a number of changes in the last couple of years in response to these litigations, trying to prevent the, the, the whole process from running away from them. So they're trying to reform on the margin and the NCAA has even come out and said, we are now willing to support name, name, image and likeness, or NIL, rights for the athletes. They said, we're willing to do that, but then they also said, it's got to be consistent with our idea of the amateur model. And so that means that they're going to want to control everything. Right. They have talked about benefits going to the athletes, but not cash going to athletes. Right. So what would a benefit be? Maybe you give them a computer. They make a TV ad for you and here's a computer, sir. You can have this computer now. Or we'll give you, we'll give you a pass for the first year of graduate school.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  We'll pay for that or whatever, because not only are they limited to benefits, but they have to be so-called educationally tethered. That have to be related to education. So the NCAA is trying to co-opt this process that has totally gotten away from them. You've got every legislature, state legislature in the country now interested in this, and you're going to see action in the next couple of months in Washington as well.

• 27:47Chuck Nice?

  So clearly, this is for the NCAA and colleges. This is about putting money in their coffers. I mean, and stopping people from taking the money out of their coffers. For the athlete, it's about fair compensation for services rendered, and it's also about an education.

• 28:06Speaker 04

  Instead of just saying, here's a scholarship, they should say, you've got a scholarship for life.

• 28:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Whenever you're ready to come back to school and be a real student and/or go to graduate school, that should be covered.

• 28:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your family.

• 28:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we're at it.

• 28:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got a quick question.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're running short on time. Will this disproportionately reward male athletes over female athletes?

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how will that, how will that play in the, on the landscape?

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Well, sure. I mean, if we're talking about nil income, publicity rights income, the male athletes obviously get much more publicity in our society than the female athletes. And so if you're talking about 2019, yes, that will happen. If you're talking about 2030, I'm hopeful that the women will rise up in stature, and that won't be so true anymore. But here's a problem. The problem is that if we're going to start paying athletes nil income, and some of them are going to be entitled to quite a bit, then the companies who are sponsoring and promoting and advertising on college sports, currently giving the money to the athletic department, are now going to say, we'll do, you know, whatever. 50% of it we'll do with the athletic department. 50% we're going to do with the great athletes, who the people want to see.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  And so the amount of money that goes to the athletics department probably is going to go down, and that means it's going to be less money to finance Title IX. College athletic programs at the very, very top level, it's called FBS, they have an average or median deficit of $16.3 million in their athletics budget. Median deficit, and that's without counting most capital costs. So you're going to take a situation where the college is already subsidizing the athletic departments in the vast majority of cases, and increase, they're going to have to increase that. So yes, there are some financial ramifications here, and yes, Title IX and women's sports might take a little bit of a hit.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're time for just fast, two last questions.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Who ultimately wins in, from where we are now in five years' time? Who do you see coming out on top? The programs, the athletes?

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The schools?

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Talking only about nil income, I think the elite athletes are the big winners here. These are the same people, by the way, who are likely going to go on and make millions and millions of dollars in the pros. I'm not sure that we need to restructure college sports in order to take care of that group of people. But they'll definitely be benefiting from this, and I think that it's a deserved benefit.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, last question.

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay. So would a life assistance benefit also be something to consider?

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is that?

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  So we're talking about primarily underprivileged or low-income people that are being exploited for the most part. Would, we have boosters and we have people who already take care of them, we know that, but it's illegal. What if we found a way to give them life assistance so that going to school wouldn't be so, wouldn't be such a hardship? Would that be something as a first step? That's not the answer, but as a first step, would that help?

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Assistance beyond just tuition remission?

• 31:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, assistance beyond just the tuition and the scholarship. It's like, you know, what they do now. The boosters come in and they're go like, we're, you know, we're gonna get you, here's some coupons for the restaurant that I own, and you need a computer for school, and here's a car, but...

• 31:18Speaker 04

  I think when we stop this interview, I'm gonna nominate you as the next president of the NCAA.

• 31:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 31:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  Now, look, the devil is in the details here. Boosters can help students after they graduate, they can't help them while they're in college. But you can certainly help them afterwards. And there have been some reforms in the NCAA over the last 10 years. One of those is to allow something called a cost of attendance allowance, so that many of the expenses that they have as athletes, not only have to go to school and pay tuition and pay for their books, but they have to travel back and forth to their hometown. Sometimes they have emergencies at their hometown, or their parents want to visit them. So there's something now called cost of a living allowance, that can go up to $6,000 a year, that will help many of these athletes. There's also, of course, Pell Grants that can go on top of the athletic scholarship. So there's been some improvement in the areas you're talking about, but certainly there can be a lot more.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  It's a complicated area to tread on, but it's certainly an area for more reform.

• 32:15Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, let me try to end with one last reflection. I, you know, I remember... Occasions where things happen first and we all react so explosively to it. Do you remember when, who's the sprinter who grabbed an American flag and ran around his body with it? From the 80s, what's his name?

• 32:37Chuck Nice?

  Um, Carl.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carl Lewis. Carl Lewis gets an American flag and he was criticized for wrapping himself in the American flag. Now, everybody does it and nobody remembers that that was looked down upon at the time. We look back on Jim Thorpe, who got his medal stripped from the Olympics because he had done something professional. And so now you look back and say, that was crazy. Give him the medal back. So, do you foresee a time where it's just basically a completely free, open marketplace? And you don't even have rules related to it because it's just if somebody wants to sponsor them, they do. If you give them millions of dollars, they do. And here's the pot of money that the school is making. It goes back to the athletes at the 50% level. Use the pros as a model. Can you see the free market just taking control over that?

• 33:22Speaker 04

  I could see it if we let it happen. And I think, again, I would insist upon, if we're doing this under the educational umbrella, that we have to modify the rules a little bit. We have to make sure that education is the primary thing that's going on.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  If you, if somebody really feels that that's not sufficient for these athletes who are generating all their revenue, then we should detach the big schools, the big commercialized schools programs from the schools and just turn them into minor leagues.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, one of the great iron.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what baseball is. Baseball is A-League, Double A and Triple A. And that's where they all are and that's where they get, that's the farm system league.

• 34:02Speaker 04

  Baseball where they have 160 minor league teams that are subsidized by the major league teams. The major league team on average spends about $30 million a year for player development. In the NFL and the NBA, they spend butt this.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 34:17Chuck Nice?

  That much. So, there you have it.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  No, why not follow the baseball model? That's certainly a way to go. Then we can, then we rip it apart from the university. No more pretense about educational primacy.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  No more cheating about that.

• 34:29Chuck Nice?

  Very quickly though, Andrew.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't have time for even that.

• 34:32Chuck Nice?

  No, very quickly. I also like what you just said there. Why aren't we looking to the NFL and the NBA to actually be a part of the solution here?

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 34:40Chuck Nice?

  Because they're the ultimate beneficiaries of what's going on.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, they are.

• 34:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, they are. And so, yeah.

• 34:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, glad we solved that problem. Aha. Andrew, a delight to have you on StarTalk. Thanks for your, your, your interest, your, your, your knowledge base, your enthusiasm. And we will so want to come back to you because this, this conversation is not over.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  It's been my pleasure, gentlemen. Thanks for having me on.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Thank you, Professor. All right. Uh, when we come back, more on college sports on StarTalk.

• 35:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. We're talking about, are you amateur or are you professional?

• 35:43Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should we be paid? Should you not be paid?

• 35:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and what did you do with Gary? He was here a minute ago.

• 35:52Chuck Nice?

  Gary had another sports thing to do, so.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I thought we were his one and only true love.

• 35:56Chuck Nice?

  No, you know, that's how those professional sports guys are. You know what I mean?

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me, I got people to go.

• 36:02Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People go places to see.

• 36:04Chuck Nice?

  You think you're the only woman in a professional sports star's life. I got news for you.

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, what are your reflections on this? What, because you made a point earlier, not everyone has equal sort of resources who has athletic talent coming up in life.

• 36:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're poor folk, they're middle-class folk, they're rich, rich folk.

• 36:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the greatest of athletes are drawn from all those populations, actually.

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but the consequences are different to each one of them coming up in college.

• 36:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so can you expand on an earlier point you were making?

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I just, I think that when you talk about paying college athletes, that this issue would not be as intensely debated if it weren't for the fact that, uh, these, these stars primarily are young, black, disenfranchised, low-income kids.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is it became an issue. Because particularly in certain sports like football.

• 37:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is highly represented by the black community.

• 37:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By a community that is itself highly represented in the under, uh, in the lower income.

• 37:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you've got people who are basically poor, waiting for the possibility that they might have a lucrative professional contract.

• 37:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas they could be making money all along because they're making money for the college.

• 37:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and I think that, you know, if, if this were an issue that, uh, where the majority of players were white, upper middle-class or middle-middle-class. Students, this wouldn't be debated at all. It wouldn't be seen as exploitation and rightly it is exploitation, don't.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No matter what.

• 37:51Chuck Nice?

  No matter what, it's exploitation, so I'll, uh, you know, uh, I'm not, but I am just kind of positing that it would not be as big of a deal, if you want, for lack of a better term, if these weren't poor black kids that were being exploited, um, simply because, you know, first of all, it's just not a good look for America.

• 38:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  You know, we had us like making billions of dollars off of people who are working for free. We kind of did that already.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People with darker skin color than you.

• 38:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. We, we, we tried that.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're sitting in the skybox. How your slaves doing? Might have been, let me trade you two for one and you see here.

• 38:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe I'll win.

• 38:31Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. So, you know, it's, it, it, especially here in this country, I, I think it's a, an even more.

• 38:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll see the golf course later.

• 38:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, in the yacht next week. Yeah, it's an interesting point.

• 38:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a kind, I mean, I don't want to go full up with the analogy, but it is a kind of slavery. Where you are making money off of the labor.

• 38:55Chuck Nice?

  Labor.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only labor, but labor that puts their future health at risk.

• 39:00Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 39:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For injuries and this sort of thing, not the least of which is head injuries for football.

• 39:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're making money off of that and they get, oh, they get free college tuition, you know, it's like, is that equal?

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  And no, I don't, I don't, it's clearly not a fair trade. Um, I mean, you know, if, if you look at, you know, what is a fair trade, I mean. We get mad when people don't get fair trade coffee. Okay, so we get mad about our coffee if it's not fair trade. We should certainly be a little upset when you're, you know, um, making money off of, like you say, which is most important, the labor, the image and the likeness. So, you know.

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more than, it's your identity.

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  It's the identity. So it's labor and the personage.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is a bigger societal problem, anyway.

• 39:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People making money off of what you look like or what your preferences are.

• 39:48Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all the rest of this, without your knowledge or consent.

• 39:50Chuck Nice?

  Right, without your knowledge or consent. And, and, and the truth of the matter is, they really don't have a choice. If you think about it, they don't have a choice. You could say, well, if you don't like it, then don't play.

• 40:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  You know, if you think it's too dangerous to play, then don't play.

• 40:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just say no.

• 40:06Chuck Nice?

  Right. Come on, help a brother out. Oh, man. I just need a little taste, baby. But, you know, I think that when you, when you look at this, the, I'm not sure if anybody's really looking at the totality of this because just, when you look, when you talk about image and likeness, these kids are tethered to social media unlike any other generation.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:32Chuck Nice?

  Now, think about Zion Williamson. This guy had like five million people total on his social media, like, you can monetize that.

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:41Chuck Nice?

  So what happens now when you say that these guys can make money off of endorsements? Does that mean like, oh, yo, I, I build my social media presence? And then I take that to Nike? And like, I mean, this could become a, a much bigger deal.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you just open the floodgates, I don't see why not.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the full, the full exploitation in the positive sense of people's talent and image. I mean, that's, that's, that's America.

• 41:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If America isn't that, I don't know what America is.

• 41:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's what I do like about it, is the fact that you're giving, you know, okay, as a really attenuated aside, Madonna said, um.

• 41:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm quoting Madonna.

• 41:20Chuck Nice?

  I'm quoting Madonna.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first or the second Madonna? Which one? I just want to get it straight.

• 41:24Chuck Nice?

  The first Madonna. That'd be hilarious. The first Madonna. This is not my baby.

• 41:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where this baby coming?

• 41:33Chuck Nice?

  Where this baby come from? Uh, but Madonna said, everybody says that I'm being, that um, I'm being exploited sexually, and they're right. I exploit my own sexuality. So is it really exploitation? So in a way, I kinda like that. If you're giving these athletes the opportunity to exploit themselves, now, now it's what you said, now it's just America, now it's just business. You know?

• 41:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it'd be interesting if someone as a college athlete makes millions of dollars as a college athlete, but then they don't get into the pros, but now they got money.

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, right, then they could buy their mama their home.

• 42:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They could do all the things that you do normally when you make, when you make the wealth later on.

• 42:14Chuck Nice?

  Who was the kid who was the quarterback that, that everybody, Tebow? So Tim Tebow?

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  I mean, huge.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He the guy that takes a knee?

• 42:23Chuck Nice?

  He's the guy that takes a knee.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:25Chuck Nice?

  Without any consequences.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without consequences, okay.

• 42:29Chuck Nice?

  I just thought, oh my god, you're, you're the first person to make me think of it. Tim Tebow took a knee all the time, and nobody had a problem with it.

• 42:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he did it for Jesus.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, I guess.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do something for Jesus, nobody has a problem. Unless you're not Christian, that's all.

• 42:43Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's, well, yeah, you're right, yeah, that's true. So, but anyway, uh, you think about this, if Tim Tebow were playing today and these rules were in effect, which they're not yet, you know, California just passed the law, Tim Tebow could make a fortune, a fortune, because of the following that he had, the personal following that he had, he would be able to exploit that via social media. I mean, think about it, if you have five million subscribers on YouTube, uh, which this is not, you, you could probably easily make a six-figure salary every year.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think so, yeah.

• 43:17Chuck Nice?

  You could easily make.

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Based on recent numbers that I've seen.

• 43:19Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Right, and so you're talking about kids that could, you know, ostensibly make, you know, uh, some could make millions, and then some could just make a living.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In all fairness to the business model, their value as an image. Can only live as long as they sustain why their image had value in the first place.

• 43:40Chuck Nice?

  Well, yes, and that but see and that's directly tethered to being a college player.

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Chuck Nice?

  So, you know.

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying, you gotta make the money in those years.

• 43:47Chuck Nice?

  Right, you gotta make the money in that time.

• 43:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, unless you then pull onto the pros and then it's that's already an open floodgate.

• 43:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Chuck Nice?

  Which is why my my great like we we spoke to Andrew Zimbalist and what I when I said, hey.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the previous segment.

• 44:00Chuck Nice?

  And what about college for life? Which to me, I think, is the best answer, but that's because I don't believe there's a value you can place on education. That's that a true education is invaluable.

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's I like the model where college is the is the baseball equivalent of a farm system for professional football.

• 44:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that.

• 44:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I like that idea. And by the way, you know, I used to be a little more idealistic than I am in my old age now. And I'm just a realist now. And I'm gonna say if you if the NCAA, remember what that stands for. National Collegiate Athletic Association. It's not National Collegiate Educational Association.

• 44:46Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Athlete, they're up there saying, well, there's still a student first and an athlete second. This is a a delusion.

• 44:54Chuck Nice?

  It is, and it's not, it's just not true.

• 44:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just not true.

• 44:57Chuck Nice?

  It's just not true. You're athlete first.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That no athlete says, I can't play in this game because I have a chemistry exam I have to take.

• 45:03Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Please give me a makeup chemistry exam because I have to play in this exam. Okay, and that's the priority of things. And I can't tell you this, I will not mention the school or any names, but I can't tell you when I had a basketball player in my astronomy class who never showed up, how many phone calls I got from the coaches.

• 45:26Chuck Nice?

  To tutor them?

• 45:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, I got phone calls.

• 45:29Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 45:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got phone calls.

• 45:31Chuck Nice?

  Or to take the test for them.

• 45:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got phone calls. All I'm saying. And so, I'm just, we should be honest about this.

• 45:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Just be honest. You're admitting them so that they can play sports, and no one is gonna ask them for help on their math test.

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they're gonna be playing sports. Let's figure that out.

• 45:49Chuck Nice?

  Right. And listen, I'm cool with that. And I think that, you know, when I say college for life, I think that that should just be the basis. I think they should still get paid. Because quite frankly, a lot of these guys can't sustain themselves as students while they're playing.

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, would this open up other elements? For example, suppose you're a really hotshot student, and you win sort of science fair contests and, you know, you do things that bring attention back to the school. Yet you're still paying the school for college education. Yet the school is presenting you forward saying, "Look at our students."

• 46:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Look at this debate team."

• 46:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "They won." "Here's the article." "Our team won." "Our..." So, would this end with sports?

• 46:35Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yes, it will end with sports.

• 46:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm just wondering.

• 46:38Chuck Nice?

  Because you're not gonna get a 70,000-seat stadium filled with people going, "Yay, debate! Debate the hell out of those guys!" Calculate that equation. "Go, go, go, go." "Oh, he forgot to carry the two!" "Oh, oh, fumble!"

• 46:58Chuck Nice?

  Classic error.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rookie error, rookie error. Forgot to carry the two in the long division, whatever. So, I'm just wondering if there's more that can be thought of. You know, generally when you pass a law, you want to consider all the possible ramifications it has.

• 47:15Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that you can plug loopholes that some person more clever than you might figure out later.

• 47:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or try to... Uh, I think the strongest rules are the one that is sort of deep and fundamental. And then you work within them, which is, accounts for some of the strength of our Bill of Rights.

• 47:30Chuck Nice?

  Right. Absolutely.

• 47:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just how deep and fundamental they reach.

• 47:33Chuck Nice?

  Well, I think...

• 47:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's why the free speech, the free speech clause...

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Allows you to sell books on the street.

• 47:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It allows you to walk around with your body painted.

• 47:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As an expression. And it's not literal speech, but it's been interpreted very broadly as a very powerful identity of what we are as Americans.

• 47:52Chuck Nice?

  So broadly that Supreme Court said that money is speech and therefore corporations are being deprived of their free speech rights if you don't allow them to participate in the election process by donating money.

• 48:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where do you think it's gonna land in 10 years?

• 48:09Chuck Nice?

  In 10 years, I think pretty much every state is gonna have this law or some version of it.

• 48:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Led by California.

• 48:15Chuck Nice?

  Led by California as per usual. And the reason is because once one state does it, guess where everybody wants to play now?

• 48:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 48:25Chuck Nice?

  See now, so now, who does that benefit? All the California universities?

• 48:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Arkansas Razorbacks? I ain't going there because you ain't paying me. It'll trip dominoes and it'll happen immediately.

• 48:35Chuck Nice?

  As great as it is to play for LSU, why would I want to play there?

• 48:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 48:39Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go play for the Trojans. That's right.

• 48:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 48:42Chuck Nice?

  You know what I mean? Because California, I can get paid.

• 48:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 48:45Chuck Nice?

  So that it's gonna be...

• 48:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a fast domino right there.

• 48:47Chuck Nice?

  That's a fast domino, without a doubt.

• 48:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rocket sled domino.

• 48:52Chuck Nice?

  Easily.

• 48:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right Chuck, well nice reflecting on this.

• 48:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting you thought deeply about it. I know you're a thoughtful guy.

• 48:58Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, I'm interested. It's good to see, I'm interested to see where this will go.

• 49:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You weren't funny at all in this segment.

• 49:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's okay. I'll give you a hall pass on that one this time.

• 49:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta stop it there. This has been StarTalk Sports Edition and Chuck Nice, always great to have you.

• 49:23Chuck Nice?

  Always good to be here, even when I'm not funny.

• 49:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was funny, saying even when you're not funny, that was funny. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, I bid you to keep looking up.