The view of college athletes as unpaid workers is gaining currency among the public. Of course, it’s one thing to have an analysis of how universities exploit their students—it’s another to know what to do about it. What about unionization? College Football Players Association founder and Executive Director Jason Stahl joins Edge of Sports for a deep dive into the merits, challenges, and opportunities for change in unionizing college athletes.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Audio Post-Production: David Hebden
Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino
Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Do college athletes need unions? How did hoops in the 1970s save the NBA? And now that the smoke has cleared, we got to talk Women’s World Cup. It’s all happening here on Edge of Sports.
(singing).
Welcome to Edge of Sports, the TV show, only on The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin, and this week we are thrilled to have on Jason Stahl, the founder and executive director of the College Football Players Association, otherwise known as the CFBPA. Also, I have choice words about the triumph of Spain’s World Cup women over not just England, but also toxic men. And lastly, on Ask a Sports Scholar, this is good. We’ve got the great Theresa Runstedtler to talk about her book Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA. I cannot wait to talk to Theresa Runstedtler. But first, Jason Stahl. Jason, thank you so much for joining us here on the show.
Jason Stahl:
Thank you for having me, Dave. Really appreciate it.
Dave Zirin:
Break it down for us. College football players, student athletes, why would they need a union? They’re not iron workers.
Jason Stahl:
Right. Well, I mean, you look at this… Okay, here’s what I’ll say. We know there’s this long history of the student athlete and that moniker being used to label college athletes that I think has distracted from the real work and the real wealth generation that these guys and gals do for their institutions. I mean, this is a multi-billion dollar industry at this point. What other industry can you say, “We actually don’t have to pay the workers a wage”? In terms of needing a union, I mean I think it’s very straightforward. Now, at CFBPA we have a seven-point platform we’re organizing guys around. Many of those are health and safety planks as well. We have planks about revenue generation, we have planks about needing to split the revenues that are generated from these massive TV contracts.
But also, as I don’t need to tell anybody who’s listening to this, football is a dangerous and violent sport, and I think a lot of these guys… We’re talking about college football in particular, and we’re talking about all levels of play. I mean, I don’t think people understand there’s over 900 college football programs in this country, if you look at all levels of play. Tens of thousands of players. This churning labor force that absolutely needs health and safety protections. Because when you have that many workers, the churn, the way in which there’s always somebody waiting to take your place, does not lead to good health and safety outcomes. Both during, when guys are playing, and of course after their playing days are over.
Dave Zirin:
Now, your organization is of course the College Football Players Association. But do you see unionization as an answer for all athletes on the college level, or just in football and revenue producing sports?
Jason Stahl:
I would say every college athlete needs a player’s association. That does not necessarily mean that every college athlete needs a unionized player’s association. I think, Dave, you hit the nail on the head. I’ve started to try to use a phrase, just to get it into circulation, of broadcast athletes. When we talk about broadcast athletes, we’re talking about athletes that, through massive multi-billion dollar media rights contracts, generate enormous wealth for their institutions, for the administrative class and higher education, for coaches, for staffers; for everyone except themselves. Athletes that generate that kind of wealth, and they can be men, they can be women, who appear on television and generate that kind of wealth, I do believe need a union. Yes.
Now, I think every college athlete though needs a player’s association that can advocate for them and that can protect them. I’ve been in contact with different people who are interested in starting a women’s college players association, college basketball players association. I do think it needs to be federated by sport to make it manageable. But I do think then I would make the difference between that unionized players association chapter, versus a players association chapter that is not unionized. And that could be done at the institutional level, the conference level, or even something bigger. For instance, if we’re moving towards a quasi-professional league at the highest levels of college football, which I think is probably where we’re going at this point.
Dave Zirin:
One of the things that you hear as an anti-union argument at the collegiate athletic level is Title IX and the idea that if we start organizing college football players, which of course pays for a lot of other programs at some schools; at other schools college football loses money, but maybe that’s a separate discussion; there’s an argument that it would hurt Title IX and access to women’s sports, particularly women’s sports that do not produce any kinds of revenue. Is college football unionization a road towards harming some women’s sports?
Jason Stahl:
Absolutely not. These are decisions and choices that could be made by leaders, again, awash in billions of dollars. This question got asked to me back in March. I testified in Washington and this question was heavily talked about at the hearing, to what extent this would happen. And I made the case at the hearing and I made the case after in a newsletter I wrote. Essentially, if you look at… College sports administrators have expanded the college football playoff system next year from four teams to 12. This is going generate many more billions of dollars for the, quote unquote, “member” institutions in the conferences coming out of this. You could take the overage of that. That’s all new money.
You have all these institutions who are using, and we need to really call them on this, they’re using the women’s sports that you and I and every football player I know care deeply about. I have a daughter who’s an athlete. I think she’s got a good chance at playing women’s sports here in the future. I want opportunities for her just as I know, again, you do and every single college football player I’ve ever talked to about this does. We should not let the administrative class in higher ed cynically use Title IX concerns if you’re sharing in the revenue generated by TV contracts, which by the way, some of that’s going to go to women. Because as we’ve seen, a lot of women’s sports generate a lot of revenue now. We saw that with the women’s final four this year. A lot of new revenue generated there. So there’s going to be plenty of wealth.
Will they have to make different decisions? Sure. They’re going to not have to hire bloated armies of administrators to do God knows what. They’re going to have to make different business decisions. But again, that’s just like any other business that exists in the United States. Any other industry has to make decisions about what you’re going to do once you get new revenue into the system, as every institution will next year with the college football playoff expansion.
Dave Zirin:
What’s it like to try to organize these athletes? What’s easy and what’s hard about your project?
Jason Stahl:
Dave, I want to start with what’s hard, because you know this is hard.
Dave Zirin:
I also know that easy may not even be the right word. What’s hard and what’s more hard about your project?
Jason Stahl:
All right. I think what’s hard, the transient nature… There’s two huge challenges. The transient nature of the workforce. The way there’s this churn, particularly now with the transfer portal. I’m very much in favor of the transfer portal, but I’d be lying if I tell you it makes my life easier as an organizer. It makes things harder. You got to keep track of who your prospective members might be. You got to try to find inroads.
The second thing I would say, fear of retaliation. In college football particularly, with the massive humanity that you have playing college football. There’s so many easy ways to retaliate that you wouldn’t even know. How are you going to bring a labor charge against loss of playing time? You know what I mean? That’s number two.
I would add a third though. There’s a bubble nature of these football programs. We really try hard to organize our first chapter at Penn State last summer, summer of ’22. And boy, I mean, all those problems that I knew that were there just manifested themselves once I… I got on the ground for eight days and it was just like… They’re so overworked, they’re so kept in the bubble that even when I was physically present and coaches were not for an eight-day period, it was extraordinarily hard to have those face-to-face meetings that you and I know are completely necessary if you’re trying to do good organizing. Those are the biggest threefold challenges.
What’s easy? I mean, I think I’d put it this way. I think we’re trying to do it the right way. We’ve been in existence now for over two years. I was working on it a full year before that, so this is over three years in on this project for me. I think when people see that, they know, okay, well this guy’s not giving up. And the people who are associated with the institution now and our leadership committee and our board of directors, our advisors, they’re not giving up either. We’re trying to create an institution that has long-term staying power. We think now that guys are starting to see that… We encounter guys now with, “Oh, I saw the logo,” or there’s this recognition of something there, even if they don’t quite know how to plug into it. So, I think as we go year by year, month by month and people realize we’re here to stay, it has made organizing easier. For sure. For sure.
Dave Zirin:
You mentioned Penn State briefly. You must have some stories from the front lines. We’d love to hear in practice what it’s like to organize some of these guys, and perhaps some successes that you’ve had that you’d like to share.
Jason Stahl:
Sure. Yeah. I wrote a lot about… People can check out my newsletter, wrote a lot about the Penn State campaign after it happened. It was great. I mean, it was like the moment I’d been waiting for. Finally you crack into a program. You get a chance to talk with current players at obviously a very name brand program, Power Five program. And thinking, “Yeah, this is it. We’re really getting a shot here to talk in meaningful ways with guys.” It was the most rewarding work experience of my entire life, even though it didn’t work out how we had planned. It was that meaningful. I think guys responded in a really positive way. And I know that’s weird to say, given that we were not successful in the organizing work.
Six days I talk with guys individually and in small groups. No more than three, and sometimes just as small as a single guy. And it was just like… You can see on their faces when you’re with them in person, just how much it’s needed. I mean, you can really feel the sense of they know that… At the very least they know they are being overworked and not taken care of well. I’ll put it that way. I think the most shocking thing to me personally is, even though we had this revenue sharing plank at the time… Because at the time the Big 10 was announcing this massive new media rights deal, and so we were using that as a organizing tool and saying, “Look man, they’re going to be getting $1.5 billion every year and you’re not getting any of it, even though you generate all the wealth for them.” I thought that was going to be it. That’s what guys latch onto. No. What guys latched onto were things like, “Why don’t we get an off season?” They literally don’t get an off season anymore, Dave. “Why aren’t we getting proper medical care? Why do I have to worry about my friend who’s now medically retired about what type of care he’s going to get for the rest of his life?” That to me was very gratifying, because that’s where I got my start.
And I’ve had so many people tell me, “Oh, you can’t have your first three platform planks be about health and safety measures. You got to start with revenue or you got to start with revenue sharing.” And I have found the exact opposite. When you talk with actually existing athletes in person, they are most compelled and most wanting to get involved when you point out to them, again at the top levels, “With a union we can do something about this whole host of problems.” This isn’t just about money. It is of course. We’re talking about wealth that’s going to make huge differences in all these guys’ lives and all their families’ lives. But for many of them, man, it is not what is compelling.
And so, having those one-on-one conversations and then… I got to meet with the entire team in the main team meeting room. They smuggled me in at seven in the morning or something, and that was it. That was the moment I really… All the hard work, just grinding it out day by day, I was waiting for a moment like that. And it really did go about as well as I could have ever hoped for, with the exception of the strength and training coach walked in in the last five minutes and blew the whole thing apart. That’s the start of the story about how the walls came crashing down after that.
Dave Zirin:
Well, he walked in and the meeting just ended on the spot, or he walked in raising hell that they were meeting in the first place?
Jason Stahl:
No, it wasn’t like that, because I don’t want to drag this guy. I don’t think he knew what he was walking into. He knew that the quarterback, Sean Clifford, who was our main organizer at the time; he knew that Sean had called an all-team meeting, players only. But it was very early in the morning. I think I was supposed to be there at eight, and then Sean called me at seven and I was in the shower and he was like, “You got to get here immediately.” And so, I’m rushing to get there, set up my presentation and all this stuff. I probably presented for maybe 50 minutes and then in the last five minutes, the strength and training coach walks in. And I think he was just inquisitive, like, “What’s going on here?” It wasn’t nasty or something.
Dave Zirin:
He wasn’t a Pinkerton or anything.
Jason Stahl:
No, he wasn’t a Pinkerton. Yeah, exactly right. No, he wasn’t there to bust the union or something. He had no idea what was going on. And so, he walks in and immediately I’m like, “That guy’s the strength and training coach, because he’s built and he’s got a handlebar mustache.” So I’m like, “I know who this guy is.” And he listened to the last five minutes and then he left, and then I took questions and there were lots of great questions. Then I gave guys a signup opportunity with the QR code. Lots of great questions, and I had tons of guys flood me at the front with more questions and talk about, “Oh, I want to connect you with this person and this person and this person.” Unbelievably positive response.
Then Sean comes right up to me and he goes, “I got to figure out where that guy went.” And I said, “That’s the strength and training coach, right?” And he said, “Yeah.” Then five minutes later, Sean came back and said he had notified basically every staff member by group text that a union organizer was talking with the team. And so, you can imagine how things went after that I think.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, I could understand you not wanting to drag someone, but that sounds like digital Pinkertonism to me.
Jason Stahl:
I think here’s the crazy thing though, Dave. I think people assume that everybody in that building who has a job has it great, and that’s not true. I think that the system can crush everybody in different ways, right?
Dave Zirin:
Very true.
Jason Stahl:
And can police and discipline everybody in unique ways. I don’t know. First of all, I would never be in that guy’s position, because I am who I am. But let’s just say theoretically I am in his position. I’m a strength and trading coach, I make a six-figure income, and somebody finds out that I haven’t told that there’s a union organizer talking with the whole team. I mean, do you lose your job? Maybe. It’s certainly like, “Why didn’t you tell us?” When I said I didn’t want to drag him, it’s more because we all got a lot of forces we’re dealing with, right?
Dave Zirin:
Very true. Wow, that’s a beautiful response.
Jason Stahl:
Thank you.
Dave Zirin:
The question of the head coach. I can’t let you go without asking you about this. If you don’t want to speak about Penn State head coach James Franklin directly, that’s fine. Do you think it’s possible to win without even at least a tacit head nod from the head coach to say, “Hey, if you want to organize this, that’s your business”? Without even that level of support, is it possible to still win? Because we all know the authoritarian nature of college football programs, we all know that coaches want that vertical integration where they’re the voice that people hear. We know that organizing threatens vertical structures. So can you win? Can the CFPA win without getting support from at least a core of college football coaches?
Jason Stahl:
I think we can, but I also think that we will get that support.
Dave Zirin:
Nice.
Jason Stahl:
I am not someone who drags coaches. Having done the work that I’m doing now, I have actually a lot more sympathy for coaches than I once did, which may seem surprising. But I think when you dig into it, coaches, head coaches, and we’re talking head coaches at big programs, feel like they’re powerless to stop changes in their industry that they disagree with. And in some ways they’re right.
I don’t want to take this too far, because of course we’re talking about multimillion dollar salaries, we’re talking about people with enormous amounts of power and so on. But I think all of us feel like we are just under the thumb of this administrative class in higher ed that does not have a clue how the industry works and just does not care about the people within the industry, including the coaches. They care about the bottom line. They care about getting some more millions and some more billions. That’s what the school presidents care about. They’re out on the golf course making a decision about whether their entire athletic department is going to move across the country to a different conference.
And so, I do think we can get those coaches on board. Even James Franklin. I mean, I think everybody assumes like, oh, this was some anti James Franklin campaign. It wasn’t. We had it all in mind that we were going to tell James Franklin right after that meeting was over. I think like a day later was the plan. And we always extend an open hand to coaches who we think there’s even a sliver of an opportunity that they might want to work with us. For sure. Now, that doesn’t mean though that I don’t think bad coaches are out there who need to have a healthy fear instilled in them. Because they have been treating guys badly for too long. And so, our entity, the CFBPA, believes that we want to work with coaches who are open to working with us. But we do think for coaches who are treating guys badly, we want to instill a healthy fear that comes with organizing the players.
Dave Zirin:
I’ve got the great Theresa Runstedtler coming in to talk about her book Black Ball, which I recommend to you. It’s about unionization in the ’70s, NBA. it’s just an amazing book about race, politics, organizing. But I wanted to give you a chance to give a pitch, because this show is watched in a lot of sports sociology classes, sports history classes, which are becoming more and more popular with college athletes. That’s anecdotally. I’m hearing that across the board.
Jason Stahl:
Oh, you’re right, Dave. You’re right.
Dave Zirin:
Maybe we could call it a post Kaepernick thing, but a lot of college athletes are wanting to know their own history as athletes and as fighters for social justice. So, I want to give you the chance to really give a pitch for the CFPA for anybody watching.
Jason Stahl:
I appreciate that, Dave. Thank you. That means a lot. First and foremost, I would say to all past, present, and future college football players, we need to get organized. We need to get you guys organized. We need to get you plugged into an authentic players association that’s trying to build from the grassroots. We look at our membership portal online where we ask you to become a member as really a way to get people plugged in to the grassroots, to organizing with other past, present, and future college football players who are interested in making the game better, making the game healthier, enacting our seven-point platform. That would be the first thing I’d say, is if you are a past, present, or future college football player, become a member today. Get plugged into the system. Let’s start organizing at your school, or your former school, or your soon school to be.
The other thing I would say, members of the general public, if you believe in what we’ve talked about today, if you believe in the work that we’re doing today, head to our website as well. Again, it’s a grassroots effort. A member of the general public who’s never played before, who’s not involved in college football at all but wants to help out, we always take donations from members of the general public. Of course. We also have a volunteer portal for people who want to help out. One of the main ways you can help out is connecting us to other past, present, and future college football players. So yeah, I think that’s about it.
Dave Zirin:
Awesome. Well, let’s pretend I’m a star athlete for a second. I think that’s a bit of a stretch. But just as a response to you, I’m getting NIL money, name, image, and likeness money. Why would I possibly need a union?
Jason Stahl:
Yeah, that’s great. I mean, you and I talked a little about this offline, Dave, but it is one of those tricky things. We’re all in favor of NIL rights. Athletes, again, getting the right to monetize their name, image, and likeness for promotional purposes in the same way that every other American can do. We’re all in favor of that. The idea that it took as long as it did for athletes to secure that basic economic freedom is insane and shows how backwards the NCAA and the administrative class in higher ed is and thinks about things.
With that said, it does create a new organizing challenge. I’m not going to say that… It is top heavy. I’ll put it that way. Your stars get more NIL dollars. I’m not saying anything controversial here to say that. And yes, that can create an organizing challenge where, for those folks, one of the things you’re having to do is you’re having to ask them to step outside of themselves and you’re having to ask them to the extent that they would lead or organize with you, you would have to ask them to do it in a selfless way. And that could be a higher bar to clear.
I think in some ways NIL has made our job easier in the sense that athletes are getting paid. And so, there’s this normalization of that. But at the same time, for organizing purposes… I’ll just put it this way. We’ve got leadership cells at some teams right now forming, and the cells are not star players.
Dave Zirin:
Got you.
Jason Stahl:
And so, I think you build out, but that’s not any different than any other union. I’ve read history of Marvin Miller organizing the MLBPA, and I think his challenge was the same. The star players felt beholden to the clubs and so on. That’s what we’re dealing with here too. It can be overcome though, just as one of the greatest union leaders ever overcame it.
Dave Zirin:
Absolutely. And Marvin Miller is a terrific example.
Jason Stahl:
You got it.
Dave Zirin:
The website is cfbpa.org. The person we are speaking with is, I’m going to say, the great Jason Stahl. Jason, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports TV.
Jason Stahl:
Dave, I’m reading you and listening to you forever, and I just can’t tell you what an honor it is being on the show. The fact that you asked me on here is really, really much appreciated.
Dave Zirin:
And now I’ve got some choice words. Okay, look, when is a kiss not just a kiss?Maybe when it’s a non-consensual assault. Maybe when it’s symbolic of years of disrespect by disreputable men with power. This kiss is what the world got to see after the Spanish women completed their World Cup triumph, beating England one to nothing in the finale. It was an improbable journey to a victory that in its aftermath was damaged. Immediately after the match, Royal Spanish Football Federation President Luis Rubiales forcibly gave star striker Jennifer Hermoso an unwanted and firm kiss on the mouth. Rubiales is now being roundly criticized across Spain and the soccer world. Spanish journalists have called him simply disgusting. Politicians across the board are calling for his resignation. Male players, female players; all of them calling for Rubiales to go.
And his response to this controversy? At first it was to double down. He said, “The kiss with Jenni? There are idiots all over. When two people have a moment of affection without any importance, we can’t listen to idiocy.” Now, it was only after people roundly called for his ouster did he apologize in a video statement. But at the end of the apology, unable to help himself, he had to say, “Here we didn’t understand the controversy, because we saw something natural, normal, and in no way, I repeat, with bad faith. But outside of the bubble it looks like it has turned into a storm. And so, if there are people who have felt offended, I have to say I’m sorry.”
Look, he clearly thinks he did nothing wrong, and he certainly did not apologize to Hermoso, who should be enjoying her triumph instead of dealing with this jackass. She was asked about the kiss afterwards and said, “Hey, I didn’t like it.” Hermoso has since tried to play down the situation, but then after that she has said that it’s utterly unacceptable. Clearly she’s being pulled in a lot of directions, but her belief is that it was wrong. And Spain’s acting Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has even weighed in as well saying that he should step down. But even before Pedro Sánchez, Yolanda Diaz, Spain’s acting Second Deputy Prime Minister, called for his resignation. And I want to read what Diaz wrote on social media. She wrote, “Our most resounding combination for what we saw. Nothing more and nothing less. A woman has been harassed and assaulted. Rubiales’ excuses are useless. What we ask for is for the sports law to be applied and for the sports federation protocols to be activated. This person should resign.”
Now, Rubiales has made clear that he would not resign at all and would have to be fired. Again, he thinks he did nothing wrong. As Nancy Armour wrote for USA Today, “The Spanish Federation posted an emoji of an index finger raised in the number one sign. But a middle finger would’ve been more appropriate, because that’s essentially what the federation was giving its players. Coach Vilda is not one of those coaches who deserve credit for their victory. It is Spain’s exceptional players who are responsible for the World Cup title. Their skills were honed with their clubs, Barcelona primarily, not with the national team. His players are also talented, that all Vilda had to do is hand in a lineup and stay out of their way, and he could barely manage that.”
I also spoke to Brenda Elsey, a professor at Hofstra and co-author of the book Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America. And people might remember Brenda Elsey from this program. She was a former guest. And she said to me that the leaders of Spain’s soccer world possess, quote, “Sexism matched only by their greed.” She continued, “In the early 2010s, this generation knew their talent was being stymied by the federation’s blatant mismanagement of the national team in the domestic professional league. Protests have resulted in better conditions, if uneven and imperfect. This World Cup was a tale of players outshining the anachronistic sexists who run global football. If the Rubiales and Vilda thought they would get credit for the brilliance of these players, they must be sorely disappointed.”
It is a blessed joy that the people of Spain have embraced this team with thousands greeting them upon their return home. Fans held watch parties in more than 100 cities. According to Armour, women’s soccer in Spain is exploding in popularity despite the decades of patriarchal abuse and mismanagement. As the players glow in their triumph, they also need to seize the opportunity to change the soccer culture, to make Spanish soccer hostile to the sexists and ensure women’s soccer gets the resources and the coaching that they deserve. As Armour wrote, “It’s not fair to ask Spain’s players to continue fighting for equality when all they should be doing is celebrating. It’s infuriating that the players’ greatest accomplishment has to forever be linked to their second class treatment. But that’s how it is for women athletes. A win on the field isn’t the end of the fight. It has to be the beginning, or things will never change.”
And I’ll just add one more note to this. This story is ongoing. By the time people see this, Rubiales may be gone. He again is refusing to resign. He is saying, “You have to fire me.” He’s acting, frankly, like the patriarchal bastard that he has shown himself to be throughout this entire process. But there is a movement afoot right now to get him gone, and hopefully by the time y’all hear these words, he will be.
And now in our Baltimore studio for our segment Ask a Sports Scholar, we have Theresa Runstedtler talking about her smash book, which has received a ton of play. It’s called Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA. Professor Runstedtler, how are you?
Theresa Runstedtler:
Really great. I’m so happy that you came to my town.
Dave Zirin:
Before we speak about your work, I mean, your connection with basketball goes way beyond the academic. I know you’ve answered this a ton of times, but I’m hoping you can speak about your history with the NBA.
Theresa Runstedtler:
Sure. I actually was just in Toronto. I’m from Canada. I was at the belated 25th anniversary reunion of the Toronto Raptors, and I used to work with them. I started actually the second year that the Toronto Raptors were even a thing in Toronto back in 1996. So you can do the math there and figure out probably how old I am. But I actually was a member of the Toronto Raptors Dance Pak. And so, the OGs got together, everybody from Isiah Thomas to Bitove, who was the original owner, and all of the front office staff who started working in the mid-’90s. It was just a great time. I still have these strong friendships from that time, and I have great memories. But I think I also, through that experience, got to see a little bit behind the curtain of how these sports spectacles are put on.
Dave Zirin:
I know that dancing in the NBA changed over time, how they did it. And I’ve heard you speak about that, about the way your dancers operated relative to how it evolved or devolved over time. Could you speak about dance? Because I don’t want people to have a 2023 idea of what y’all were doing, because it sounds much more transgressive when I’ve heard you talk about it.
Theresa Runstedtler:
Yeah. I have to say, now that I was able to go back and talk to a lot of the dancers again from that era and speak with Tamara Mose, who was the original choreographer; somebody who came out of hip hop in Toronto and somebody who was really committed to fostering, and I hate to use the jargon, a diverse look of the team, but that really is what she and the folks at the Raptors put together back in ’95 and ’96. I was part of the team from ’96 to ’99. Women and men. And this is something that folks don’t often know about. We were a team in the NBA that had male dancers, and they did the same things that the female dancers did. They were part of the team. We danced hip hop. We were all trained dancers, some of us were gymnasts. We actually had an Olympian, a former Olympian on the team who was a rhythmic gymnast. Madonna Gimotea.
And so, we had this eclectic group of women of all different backgrounds, all different skills, different shapes, sizes. Some of us were tall, some of us were shorter, some of us were more muscular. And we really, I think, represented what young Toronto looked like back in the ’90s. But I think as the team over the years became a little bit more corporatized, they were bought by Maple Leaf Sport and Entertainment, which at the time owned the Maple Leaf team of the NHL; they sanitized us a little bit and we became much more glitzy, much more glam, I think a lot whiter, danced to things that didn’t have connotations of gangster rap, things like that. They really tried to rein in that image, especially towards the 2000s. You really saw a shift in the team.
Dave Zirin:
The thesis of your book is so different than the standard thesis about the history of the NBA; one that I had certainly accepted before reading your book. And that thesis, for my listeners, is that the NBA was on life support in the 1970s. It was a product nobody wanted to touch. And then in the 1980s, with the ascension of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, later Michael Jordan and certainly David Stern as the new commissioner, there were some new sheriffs in town and the league was put on correct footing and became the mega global thing that it is today.
But your book has this argument that without the ’70s you don’t get the ’80s. And not in the negative sense, but in the very positive sense. That it actually saved the soul of the NBA on numerous fronts. What I’m curious about is how you came up with the thesis itself, because it is so different from a lot of our starting points of understanding that history.
Theresa Runstedtler:
I think I’m just naturally a skeptical person, a cynical person. I think you have to be when you do African-American studies, African-American history, and whoo, critical race theory. You have to be a little bit cynical. When I started doing some research on the 1980s, I came across the Chris Cobbs infamous article in the Los Angeles Times from 1980 where it basically said 40 to 75% of the NBA is using cocaine, and it made it sound as if the NBA was this den of iniquity, that it was full of criminals and degenerates. And that made me stop in my tracks, because when I went back to look at what other folks had written about it, they just passed it off as if it was just the whole truth without taking a step back and saying, “Is this maybe a racialized narrative?” Why is the NBA, which at that time was relatively recently a league that was about 75% Black, that transformation happened over the 1970s; was race part of this conversation? What kind of cultural work was this moral panic about the NBA doing?
And this is not to say that… I’ve been around the scene enough to know that NBA players do things. So I’m not saying nobody was doing cocaine or nobody was interested in cocaine. I’m not making that claim at all. But I became much more interested in why was the media so interested in this story and why did they become the center of this discussion about the rising use of cocaine, the rising use of free base, when we know that at the time in the 1980s, the early 1980s, this was largely a drug of the white jet set, white celebrities, white professionals, Wall Street bankers, et cetera.
When I started going back in time, being the historian that I am, I found all of these labor fights and I said, “Aha! Okay.” So the archetype for the troublesome ball player… And I should say all of these labor fights in the early ’70s were Black led, so the archetype of the troublesome Black ball player was really fused in that earlier moment. The idea that they were asking for too much, they weren’t being grateful. Shouldn’t they just accept the fact that there’s a draft and a reserve clause? They’re making too much money with the advent of the ABA creating this competition between two rival leagues for player talent. All of those narratives that came to encapsulate the entire decade, and particularly the latter part of the decade, were really coming out of this moment of incredible resistance and struggle, which radically reshaped the relationship, the power dynamic between players and team owners in ways that absolutely benefited somebody like Isiah, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and fast-forward to LeBron James and the like. All of the things that they’re able to do in their careers in terms of moving from team to team, in terms of making their revenue share an appropriate revenue share vis-a-vis the team owners; all of that was set from the 1970s to the early ’80s. And so, that’s really, I think, how Black players saved the soul of the NBA and turned it into this global profit-making machine.
Dave Zirin:
I’m starting to understand why a lot of Black athletes or socially conscious athletes are really into your book, particularly ones of that generation. And you should just correct me if I’m wrong here, because the narrative feels very White savior-ish. That the ’70s were bad because of the dominance of the Black ball player. The ’80s, David Stern, new sheriff in town, Larry Bird, Great White Hope. And if we’re being honest, Magic Johnson, less threatening, big smile. Definitely differentiated from someone like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dramatically in a ton of columns. I mean, I once read one that said, “Magic is going to teach Kareem how to smile.”
Theresa Runstedtler:
Oh gosh.
Dave Zirin:
And so, I like the pushback against the White savior narrative. Was that one of the intentions in putting this together?
Theresa Runstedtler:
Yeah.
Dave Zirin:
And do you think that’s right?
Theresa Runstedtler:
Yeah. I wanted to decenter Stern, decenter the mid-’80s, decenter Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. One of the things that we forget about, which became abundantly clear to me when I was doing the research, is that David Stern was around during the entire era that I wrote about.
Dave Zirin:
Wow.
Theresa Runstedtler:
So from the Connie Hawkins case, Connie Hawkins v. the NBA, which exposed blacklisting by professional leagues, all the way forward to Oscar Robertson at All v. the NBA, which was the case that helped to ultimately bring down the reserve clause and open the door to unrestricted free agency in the years that followed; he was watching all of this happening. He was involved in all of those negotiations.
And so for me, his, quote unquote, “genius” of leaning into race and not backing away fully from the Blackness of the league, he actually learned from all of those struggles that happened in the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s. That he couldn’t run away from the dominance of Black players. Whether it was in labor fights, whether it was on the court, whether it was in terms of the dramatic change in the style of the game over the course of the 1970s. He couldn’t run away from that. He watched that transformation happen. He just figured out how to better package it.
So for me the genius is not that he came in and cleaned up the league, it’s that he realized the product that he had and figured out how to market it now to a younger generation that was into hip hop, that was into ideas of multiculturalism, and was able to expand the fan base. But folks in the 1970s hadn’t really figured that out at that point.
Dave Zirin:
Can we talk about any of this without talking about either the Black athletes revolt of the 1960s or the Black freedom struggle of the 1960s? How does that frame or influence the generation of players? Not only for kicking back on labor issues in the system, but even just feeling free to be themselves in their own skin in a way that, say, Bill Russell’s generation was not able to be?
Theresa Runstedtler:
Yeah. I think I would take it a step further and say it’s not that you need to mention those things and then mention what happened in the ’70s, but actually what happened in the ’70s was part of those earlier moments. And we often talk about the revolt of the Black athletes ending in maybe 1969. But I actually think it continued, but it continued on different terrain. It continued in the realm of labor relations. Maybe folks weren’t out there always in the street saying, “Hey, I’m being Jim Crowed on the college campus,” et cetera. It was a different conversation, but they were still pointing out the fact that this lily-white front office structure team ownership was essentially controlling their lives, and fighting back against that.
So I think a lot of folks, and I’m thinking of somebody like Oscar Robertson who became the head of the NBPA in 1965 and then carried forward into the early 1970s, he himself has said in his own memoir that he wanted to try and run the NBPA like a civil rights organization. Because he realized that if you don’t get everybody on board, down to the last guy coming off the bench, you’re never going to be an effective force in terms of speaking up against the team owners, who had so much more financial power and they had all the lawyers, et cetera. So, he took the lessons of organizing from the civil rights movement and applied them to the NBPA.
Somebody like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, for example, came through that whole era of the revolt of the Black athlete. He was one of the few to actually just not go to the Olympics as a form of personal protest in 1968. He did not want to be used as this triumphant image of American racial tolerance. But he takes that desire to just be Black on his own terms into the league with him, and that really unsettled so many people. But I think not fitting that typical archetype that journalists had expected at that time, that team owners had expected, the always joyful, always grateful, always submissive, apolitical; by not being that, he actually opened up a space for other players to not have to live up to that kind of crossover appeal to White audiences or White power brokers. People paid a price for that at that time.
Dave Zirin:
Definitely.
Theresa Runstedtler:
And there’s still a bit of a price to be paid if you don’t live up to the most respectable terms of Blackness that I think wider audiences expect. But the terrain has shifted and more things are considered acceptable now. People don’t automatically think that you’re, quote unquote, “thug” if you act a certain way.
Dave Zirin:
One last question. Just like there’s this really interesting relationship, as you said, it’s not one and then the other, but there’s this interplay between the revolt of Black athletes in the ’60s and ’70s and the broader Black freedom struggle. That there’s a dialogue. Do you think books like yours, the recent book by Spencer Haywood about his history; are these coming out, do you think, now as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement? Because I can tell you something, growing up a big sports fan, I always knew about Kurt Flood. I never knew about Oscar Robertson in terms of their role in labor and struggle. It was always something erased. Connie Hawkins? Forget about it. Spencer Haywood? Forget about it. It was almost like they gave you Kurt Flood, but not these other incredible figures. Do you think there’s a dialogue going on with this new scholarship and the BLM movement?
Theresa Runstedtler:
I mean, for me there definitely was a dialogue in terms of figuring out what is the prehistory to Black athletes’ resurgence in activism beyond the field, beyond the court, et cetera. Most notably, somebody like Colin Kaepernick who experienced his own form of blacklisting by the NFL, and yet we aren’t talking about Connie Hawkins in the same breath. And Connie Hawkins’ story is a little bit different because of his unjust, basically slandering in the media. That he had connections to a game fixing scandal. But nonetheless, it really, I think, drives home how much economic rights still matter. And Colin Kaepernick is doing fine, but it tells you something when somebody who has that much stature, that much wealth, is completely stonewalled by team owners and league officials. It reminds you again of that still existing power dynamic between ownership, management, and the folks who are actually the players. They might be high paid players, but they’re still the laborers. They’re the labor on the court or on the field.
And I think that in some ways athletes are connecting to their experience of being Black and what it means to be Black beyond the court in terms of experiencing the threat of police violence, et cetera. But it’s also laying bare still that racial capitalism that runs these professional sports leagues in North America. I mean, all over the world actually.
Dave Zirin:
I can’t think of better note to end on, because it connects so much with our interview that we did with Jason Stahl about organizing college football players. So much of this history informs the kind of movements that people are involved in today around race, sports, civil rights, equity, all the things that we’re being told are bad words that we’re trying so hard to fight with, fight through, and make a better world by applying these principles. Hey, Theresa Runstedtler, thank you so much for joining us.
Theresa Runstedtler:
Thanks for having me.
Dave Zirin:
Well, that’s all the time we have here this week. Thank you so much to Jason Stahl. Thank you so much to Professor Theresa Runstedtler for coming in studio to have the conversation about Black Ball. Yo, for everybody out there listening, please know that it’s The Real News Network, TRNN, that makes Edge of Sports TV possible. For everybody out there, please stay frosty. We are out of here. Peace.
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