Striking a Nerve: The Atlantic

Published on 10 December 2015 by in

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James Bennet, editor of The Atlantic, kindly offered me a magazine assignment to survey the world of college sports as an outside historian. We did not expect the result. Within hours of publication, Hall of Fame sports journalist Frank Deford ignited a national debate that continues.

Jeff MacGregor on ESPN: “The extraordinary Taylor Branch cover story in the October [2011] issue of The Atlantic lays out in precise and killing inventory the mortal sins of the NCAA. Frank Deford called it “the most important article ever written about college sports.” I’m sure you’ve heard about it by now. Please read it.”

Read the full article in The Atlantic >

 

See and Read Media Reactions

Jump to: Remarks | Video | Audio | Articles
 

Remarks

“Over the decades, the word amateur changed its meaning. It used to convey a moral sensibility, but now it conveys an economic one: not getting paid. As many universities have lost confidence in their ability to instill character, the moral mission of the university has withered. Commercialism and professionalism have filled the void. Taylor Branch’s superb cover article in the current issue of The Atlantic, “The Shame of College Sports,” shows how financial concerns have come to dominate college athletics. Everybody makes money except the players. College football coaches at public universities make more than $2 million on average, according to the article, and even assistant coaches sometimes make nearly $1 million.”

New York Times, David Brooks


“Dear Mr. Branch:

When Iraq was expelled from, or graduated from, the Axis of Evil, I wanted to give its place to the NCAA, for all the reasons so effectively explored in your terrific piece, and for torturing the University of Illinois over its mascot.”

George F. Will


Deadspin: The aftershocks from “The Shame of College Sports,” Taylor Branch’s devastating cover story in The Atlantic, continue to ripple. Two other pieces are out today advancing the notion that college athletes deserve financial compensation.”


Deadspin: “Aside from reminding Americans for the next 15 minutes that history has actual value, Taylor Branch’s devastating article, “The Shame of College Sports,” finally fully legitimized the discussion of paying college athletes for their performance. It certainly didn’t approve the notion by fiat, but simply allowing it to enter the conversation as an equally reasonable proposition was triumph enough.”


SBNation.com: “For more on the “student-athlete” rhetorical device, set aside some time for Taylor Branch’s landmark piece on the NCAA.”


Orlando Sentinel: “This behemoth will take a long, long time to read. But it is absolutely worth it as Pulitzer Prize-winner Taylor Branch takes a look at the NCAA and the myth of amateurism.”


LAist.com: “With Taylor Branch serving the NCAA the largest body blow to date in October’s The Atlantic Monthly, it is clear there is no other option: the NCAA not only has to die, it is inevitable that is will die.”

 

Video

MSNBC, The Dylan Ratigan Show

PBS NewsHour with Hari Sreenivasan

National Sports Journalism Center, Dave Kindred

 

Audio

Hang Up and Listen, Slate.com podcast

Historian Taylor Branch Critiques College Sports on WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station

The Sham of College Sports Podcast, CBSSports.com, Eye on College Basketball

 

Articles

The New York Times: The Amateur Ideal, David Brooks

This Sporting Life, ESPN: It’s time: The death penalty for the NCAA

Sports Illustrated, Hoop Thoughts by Seth Davis: Should college athletes be paid? Why, they already are.

CBSSports.com, Eye on College Basketball: The Sham of College Sports

The New Yorker: The End of College Football?

Business Insider: The Good, the Bad and the Potential of College Sports

San Antonio Express: Trinity lost glory and kept its soul

Charleston Gazette Mail: EDITORIAL: Should college athletes get paid?

The Dallas Observer: It’s About Time We Pay College Athletes and Get Them Off the NCAA’s Plantation

Bleacher Report: College Basketball: Are the Players Student-Athletes or Servant-Athletes?

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George Dohrmann of Sports Illustrated has launched an ambitious model to investigate the feasibility of paying college athletes. His results so far are posted on the SI site, prefaced admirably as follows: “The mission of our universities is to educate, but college sports is big business, and no one wants young athletes exploited.”

I applaud Dohrmann for this effort. It seems well motivated, and it shows that knowledgable people are thinking seriously at last about the fundamental structure of college sports.

Still, readers should pay attention to the basic design of Dohrmann’s model. Its starting point is the current athletic budget at leading universities, and its question is how much if anything those athletic departments can afford to pay their players. Not surprisingly, he concludes that “the vast majority of athletic departments do not generate enough profit to pay athletes.” Any revenue for such pay has been allocated elsewhere. Dohrmann’s model tracks the difficulty of re-allocation on a presumption that money to pay football and basketball players must come from the elimination of other teams.

This framework seems skewed to me. It purports to be an open-minded exploration while tacitly accepting too much of the status quo. “SI [Sports Illustrated] is not advocating paying college players,” Dohrmann states at the outset. “That’s a decision best left to college administrators.” Embedded there is a presumption that those administrators unilaterally can and should decide whether or not to pay their key talent. Why should they? What boss would give up discounted labor, especially when the resultant savings have been distributed among the bosses and coaches themselves?

I suggest a more basic starting point. Who should be involved in decisions about pay for college players? Does exclusion from the process exploit them inherently? If athletes are entitled to bargain for their own livelihood, like other citizens, then colleges must be free to pay them or not. A market would evolve. Salaries for coaches doubtless would decline. The overall college community, including the players, would make decisions about whether and how big-time sports are compatible with education. Players would cope straightforwardly with separate standards in two careers, academics and (often) commercialized sports.

Currently the system is rigged by a shaky cartel agreement through the NCAA. My survey of NCAA history, which appeared in The Atlantic, is now expanded and current for $3.99 in a Byliner.com ebook, “The Cartel,”. By confronting the hoax of amateurism, Sports Illustrated could re-build George Dohrmann’s worthy model on a sounder basis.

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Homepage - King in the Wilderness

Published on 31 March 2018 by in

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King in The Wilderness

King in the Wilderness

Please allow me a quick statement of joy: At last! For thirty years, since the publication of Parting the Waters in 1988, I have been trying and failing to move authentic civil rights history from the printed page to film. Thanks to HBO and Kunhardt Films, my long quest will end on Monday, April 2 with HBO’s premier broadcast of “King in the Wilderness.” I’m an executive producer along with screenwriter Trey Ellis and HBO VP Jackie Glover.
Read More>

Tweet me your questions about the film

Watch the trailer on HBO

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David Simon is funny and blunt. He announced at this packed immigration rally that he and I have failed so far to get a “green light” for our miniseries based on my MLK-era books. But we haven’t given up, either. A freedom story from the guts of racial struggle remains urgent and timeless.

Below is the written text for my speech. They gave me only five minutes to cover the historic highs and lows of U.S. immigration history, but I was honored to try. Other speakers offered a wide variety of perspectives both personal and profound. They are listed at the bottom along with a link to the Washington Post live stream video of the rally. There is also a link for contributions to the four groups working for immigrant rights.

I have been laying low on social media in recent months, working on a book, but I hope to take a more active part in national dialogue again soon.


Remarks by Taylor Branch

“City of Immigrants” Rally
Baltimore Beth Am Synagogue
February 13, 2017

Thanks to Beth Am, the organizers, and all of you for coming.

The issue that brings us here has deep roots in American history. Our founding heritage is compromised by embarrassment and disgrace regarding immigrants, but also, as with slavery, it contains profound inspiration with tools for freedom.

I submit two tasks tonight. First we must ground ourselves in democratic principle. Second, we must recognize that those principles require personal engagement across the inhibiting lines that divide our nation and the world.

In 1790, America’s first naturalization law required an aspiring immigrant to be “a free white person.” For nearly two centuries afterward, our leading intellectuals helped nativists secure the “white person” standard within a pseudo-scientific hierarchy of races, always with white people on top.

In the late 19th Century, Hopkins professor Robert Bean weighed brains, seeking to prove that white ones were heavier and therefore smarter. John Fiske at Harvard analyzed the wrinkles in brain lobes, and phrenologists measured the angles of foreheads and jawbones. Anthropologists catalogued up to 34 distinct shades of skin color. The founders of sociology, psychology, and many other social sciences joined naturalists to make eugenics a centerpiece of progressive movements to improve mankind by making foreigners more like themselves.

In 1907, Congress raised the stakes of whiteness by mandating that any American woman who married a non-white immigrant would be stripped of her own citizenship without trial. Such exclusions persisted in spite of contradiction and embarrassment. Definitions floundered over basic categories, let alone details. Eminent social scientists counted variously three, five, eleven, sixteen, on up to sixty-three distinct races.

Worse, the whole idea of a “Caucasian” race turned out to rest on a single sample shipped in 1795 to Johann von Blumenbach, a founder of sociology, who said this lone skull from the Caucasus resembled German specimens in his collection. On this flimsy basis, some people today still think they are being scientifically precise when they refer to someone as “Caucasian.”

Nevertheless, race-based immigration quotas persisted until well after World War II. Here I can speak personally. My sister Cherry is a Korean War orphan who has lived her whole life without knowing any Asian peers or peer families. She was abandoned among other starving infants in 1954, when there were no immigration slots for Asians, and a lawyer advised my parents that authorities in Georgia never would approve refugee status for a non-white baby from an orphanage near the border of communist North Korea. The lawyer confided outside the law, however, that those same cowardly authorities probably would not seize and deport an actual baby who arrived without papers.

So my father flew to Korea on slow airplanes with propellers. Sure enough, desperate nurses at the orphanage agreed to release Cherry but only if my father agreed also to take—meaning technically kidnap—a second malnourished baby to an adopting family in California.

This is a blessed, hopeful story for our family. Cherry usually hosts the sibling reunions, but she grew up with no exposure to Asian people or culture. That’s really a gross understatement. We didn’t even have Italians in Atlanta. I think the first pizza restaurant opened when I was in high school. We lived among homogeneous white Protestants segregated from black people.

From my own work in civil right history, I urge you to recognize that the black-led freedom movement of the 1960s provided sacrificial leadership and political genius to open our immigration laws to the world. A largely invisible people, who lacked every political advantage from wealth and social status to the vote, displayed stupefying courage. Small children, mostly girls as young as six years old, broke the emotional resistance of segregated America by singing freedom songs as they marched into police dogs and firehoses in Birmingham. How’s that for conquering your fears and inhibitions to make witness for a larger cause?

Two years later, lessons and inertia from Selma helped move the United States toward a universal measure for citizenship when Congress overrode two protracted filibusters by almost identical votes—first to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, then to repeal strict immigration quotas that long had choked off entry from most of the world. President Lyndon Johnson, on signing the immigration bill into law at the Statue of Liberty, vowed that such quotas “will never again shadow the gate to the American nation with the twin barriers of prejudice and privilege.”

Since then, applicants from all countries have met neutral standards passing through U.S. immigration. Whole communities flourish that never before existed, even here in immigrant-rich Baltimore, pledging together to uphold our Constitution-based nationhood above every ethnic prejudice.

Over the past fifty years, our openness to newcomers has transformed the face of the United States literally and figuratively. More than we realize, Americans are at home with our democratic creed of multi-national, multi-ethnic citizenship. Universities that once admitted only white males now spearhead diversity with students and teachers, doctors and patients, administrators and workers, from many nations.

Tonight this beacon is endangered by the resurgence of tribal hatreds and fears in our politics. All of us must rally to defend not only this diverse community but also the ideas that support it. We must stand up for stragglers and against bigots, recognizing that no foreign origin is too foreign to yield a fellow citizen. The stakes are far greater than courtesy or manners. At the Statue of Liberty, President Johnson proclaimed a vital imperative for our shrinking globe. He said, “We, because of who we are, feel safer and stronger in a world as varied as the people who make it up.”

If you find it hard to imagine such noble sentiments from a drawling old Texan fifty years ago, let’s join together to achieve and defend something nobler. I think Lyndon would be happy.


Watch all of the speakers below

My portion begins at about 1 hour and 27 minutes in.

Program

David Simon
Writer and Producer, Blown Deadline Productions

Maciej Ceglowski
Founder, Tech Solidarity

Marielena Hincapie
Executive Director, National Immigration Law Center

Dr. Leana Wen
Health Commissioner, Baltimore City

Kristen Strain
Executive Director, Baltimore, Tahirih Justice Center

Taylor Branch
Author and Historian, The King Era Trilogy

Ruben Chandrasekar
Executive Director, International Rescue Committee in Maryland

DeRay McKesson
Activist, Organizer, Educator

Sonia Kumar
Staff Attorney, ACLU of Maryland

Nancy E. Kass
Professor of Bioethics and Public Health, Johns Hopkins

Beau Willimon
American Playwright and Screenwriter

Steve Earle
American Rock, Country, and Folk Singer-Songwriter

Donations Benefit These Four Organizations

National Immigration Law Center

Tahirih Justice Center

International Rescue Committee

The ACLU of Maryland

 

Make a donation

 

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Dear Friends,

If you have time for one song over the holidays, please try Jim Cox’s version of “City Boy.” Our Baltimore men’s spirituals group, Soulful Revue, slightly adapted the lyrics by blues artist Keb’ Mo’ in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death not far from our church. Judge Mike Reed plays the harmonica. You can listen to “City Boy” and read the lyrics here >

On a much lighter note, Off Our Rocker released in November my second recorded tribute to the great Roy Orbison. His voice and creativity are matchless, but I took a shot at the high finale in “Only the Lonely.” Listen to “Only the Lonely”

Off Our Rocker’s third album, “Songs We Forgot,” continues a joyful reunion of three 1960s college band-mates at UNC. Samples Here. John Yelverton still rips through “Good Lovin” by the Rascals, and we think Bill Guy sounds better than Peter Noonan. Did you know that Burt Bacharach wrote “Any Day Now” for Chuck Jackson and “Baby It’s You” for The Shirelles?

This year marked Soulful Revue’s 10th anniversary at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in downtown Baltimore. We aim for close harmony on spirituals both somber and playful. Our senior pastor beatboxes in Ed Sheeran’s version of “Wayfaring Stranger.” Our radiologist goes full gospel in “Plant My Feet on Higher Ground.” We try a song by Van Morrison. To listen, click on any song title on this page.

Happy holidays. In anxious times, reach deep for the best in us all.

Taylor

 

City Boy

I hear a voice, I hear the sound
The sound of my shoes, shuffling on out of town
Too many wounded, too many cars
Take me to Memphis, Mercury, or Mars
‘Cause I wanna go, where my spirit rarely roams
Just a city boy, looking for a home

I can’t breathe, I can’t see
This city is no place for me
I can’t seem to find my way
Just existing from day to day
But I want to be where my soul can run free
I’m just a city boy, trying to make a home

Now, I don’t wanna be no prisoner
And I sure don’t wanna be no slave
I want to look out at night and see stars in the sky
The Little Dipper and the milky way

I can’t sleep, it’s too loud
Everywhere I go there seems to be a crowd
Tired of all these boarded-up streets
I want to feel the dirt underneath my feet
Then I wanna go where my children can grow old
I’m just a city boy, tryin’ to make a home

I wanna go where the buffalo roam
I’m just a city boy, trying to make a home
Just a city boy, lookin’ for a home
City boy
City Boy
by Keb’ Mo’
Lyrics Slightly Adapted 2015
Baltimore’s Soulful Revue, soloist Jim Cox

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Ongoing Debate

Published on 11 December 2015 by in

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U.S. Senate Hearing July 9, 2014. Witnesses (l-r): Myron Rolle, Devon Ramsey, Taylor Branch, William Bradshaw, Richard Southall, NCAA president Mark Emmert

Many people have strong feelings about college sports. Some wish the big-money games would disappear to restore primacy for academics. Others express envy or resentment of college athletes. Many instinctively reject my thesis that the NCAA system robs college players of their right to seek compensation outside the classroom.

Below is a sample of my part-time involvement in an NCAA sports controversy that has developed over the past four years. For me, the key issues flow directly from those encountered in my chosen career as a civil rights historian.

Jump to: Exchanges and Commentary | Broadcast and Video Links | Congressional Testimony

 

Taylor Branch in high school

Believe it or not. That’s me, #85, about to tackle the opposing #30 for my high school Westminster Wildcats of Atlanta, Georgia in 1963, not long before the Kennedy assassination.

Exchanges and Commentary

Toward Basic Rights for College Athletes: Update in The Atlantic, 2015

Student Exchange on College Sports, 2014

Food For Thought: Why Do Small Colleges Need the NCAA?, 2013

Are Big-Money College Sports a Bubble In Higher Education?, 2012

A Three-Point Reform Agenda for Sports in Higher Education, 2012

Reply to George Washington University Law Professor Neil Buchanan, 2012

Sports Illustrated’s Skewed “Pay-for-Play” Model, 2011

NCAA Reform and the Penn State Scandal, 2011

Seth Davis vs. Taylor Branch, Round 2 on CBS Sports Network, 2011

1963: Westminster Wildcats of Atlanta, Georgia, 2011

 

Broadcast and Video Links

NBC-TV panel discussion with Taylor Branch, Sarita Gupta, Jeffrey Kessler, and Dave Zirin on trade union efforts, basic reform, and the role of race in NCAA sports, 2014

Video Link on U.S. Senate Hearing on NCAA Sports, 2014

CSPAN-TV, Debate with LSU President John Lombardi at the American Enterprise Institute, CSPAN-TV 2012

Aspen Ideas Festival, Video Debate on College Sports, 2012

 

Congressional Testimony

Text of My Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, 2014

Video Link and Blog Report on U.S. Senate Hearing on NCAA Sports, 2014

 

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E-book and Documentary Film

Published on 10 December 2015 by in

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The Cartel

Questions and heightened interest led me to publish an expanded e-book before the end of 2011, The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA. The e-book contains new chapters on subjects such as the NCAA’s growing power in academic supervision and its reluctant role in Title IX sports for female athletes.

Read excerpts from The Cartel >

Purchase the E-Book >

 

MV5BMTQ2NjI0NDU3Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMDU4OTgzMDE@._V1_UY268_CR4,0,182,268_AL_Schooled

Producer Andrew Muscato enlisted me along with NFL Players Association President Domonique Foxworth to make a documentary film, “Schooled: The Price of College Sports.” The EPIX network aired the film in 2013, featuring Jay Bilas, Ed O’Bannon, Joe Nocera, Sonny Vaccaro, Bob Costas, Arian Foster, and antitrust lawyer Michael Hausfeld, among others.

Watch the documentary >

 
 
 

Excerpts From The Cartel

Rules changed slowly, but college sports stayed chic…Scott Fitzgerald, a three-day failure at Princeton football, pestered coaches all his life with suggested plays, and Jack Kerouac was a star college running back until he expressed his maverick impulse in 1942: “Scrimmage, my ass.”


Scholars and sportswriters still yearn for grand juries to ferret out every bauble that reaches a college athlete, but the NCAA’s ersatz courts can only masquerade as public authority.


“We may not make a university student out of him,” [Georgia’s defense lawyer Hale] Almand told the court, “but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbage man when he gets through with his athletic career.”


The NCAA remained a guys’ culture. Its veteran insiders…found churlish allies inside the Reagan administration, where cabinet officers derided Title IX as “the lesbian’s bill of rights.”


I drove down for the [Iron Bowl], into the throbbing heart of college sports…Before dawn on game day, a sleepless caller babbled over fan radio station WJOX that he “couldn’t stop thinking about the coin toss,” and pilgrims packed the Bear Bryant museum all morning.


[Bill] Russell developed a theory that every sport seeks its blend of art and war. He saw beauty in Muhammad Ali and ferocity in cute gymnasts breaking bones to win.


The NCAA makes money—and enables universities and corporations to make money—from the unpaid labor of young athletes. All this is accomplished by fiat. There is no statutory justification at all, whereas even slavery, for all its horrors, was debated and codified in straightforward detail.


The fans at one road game somehow discovered Tiny’s minuscule SAT scores, which they waved on signs as they taunted him with singsong cries of “Re-tard!” [Tutor Brenda] Monk’s nostrils flared. “That’s the only time I ever thought about going up into the stands,” she sighed.


Amateur rule dissolved in the Olympic cradle where it had been born, and the world did not end. Indeed, most people scarcely noticed.


A fairy-tale version of the founding of the NCAA holds that President Theodore Roosevelt, upset by a photograph of a bloodied Swarthmore College player, vowed to civilize or destroy football. The real story is that Roosevelt maneuvered shrewdly to preserve the sport—and give a boost to his beloved Harvard.


A thousand questions lie willfully silenced because the NCAA is naturally afraid of giving “student-athletes” a true voice.

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Sacred and Classical

Published on 20 November 2015 by in

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Soulful Revue Sunday at Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian in Baltimore

FullSizeRender Low Down the Chariot

3-panel-Freddie-Gray-Mural

This year marked the 10th anniversary appearance of our ad hoc men’s gospel group, Soulful Revue. We have provided the music for one summer
worship service per year.

Our selections on August 30 were mindful of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement and the local stirrings for racial justice since the uprising in April
over Freddie Gray, who died in police custody.

Friends have painted a somber mural of Freddie Gray in his neighborhood (pictured above), less than a mile from our church.

Click below to hear the six songs and hymns from this year’s Soulful Revue service:

City Boy
Lyrics slightly adapted from a song by the blues artist Keb’ Mo’.
Solo: Jim Cox
Harmonica: Mike Reed (far left in photo)
Piano: Michael Britt
Full Force Gale
By Van Morrison, arr. by Coda
Solo: Court Robinson
Wayfaring Stranger
Traditional, arr. by Ed Sheeran
Solo: Rob Tracy (at center mike, with guitar)
Beatbox: Andrew Foster Connors (l), Court Robinson (r)
Low Down The Chariot
Spiritual, arr. by Amherst College Glee Club
Solo: Taylor Branch
Get Together
By Chet Powers, arr. by The Youngbloods
Solos: Charles Reichelt (l), David Miller (r)
Guitars: Charles Reichelt, Rob Tracy
Guest Drummer: Alex Reichelt (age 11)
Plant My Feet on Higher Ground
Johnson Oatman, Jr., arr. by The Davis Sisters
Solo: David Todd
Guitars: Charles Reichelt, Rob Tracy
Piano: Michael Britt

Soulful Revue Members

Taylor Branch
Michael Britt
Hilbert Byers
Andrew Foster Connors, senior pastor
James Cox
Tim Hughes, assistant pastor
John McQueen
David Miller
Mike Reed
Charles Reichelt
Graham Richardson
Court Robinson
Elden Schneider
David Todd
Rob Tracy

Sound Recording and Mixing: Eric Echols
Photos: Franklin Branch and Christy Macy


“Elijah”

Mendelssohn ElijahI am a chorister in the tenor section at Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in Baltimore. On May 17, 2009, we performed Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah” with celebrated guest organist Frederick Swann and soloists drawn mainly from the Peabody Conservatory. It was a thrill for me to be part of such glorious music.

Our church has preserved the “Elijah” performance in a high-quality 3-CD set.

 

 

 

Click below to hear audio samples.

If With All Your Hearts
For God Shall Give the Angels
Blessed Are All They who Fear God
Cast Thy Burden upon the Lord
Thanks be to God
Hear ye, Israel
It is Enough; Lord Take my Life
God, Watching Over Israel, Slumbers Not
O Rest in the Lord
Holy is God the Lord
And Then Shall Your Light Break Forth

To learn more about Brown Memorial, the Tiffany concert series, or to order CDs of “Elijah,” go to: http://www.browndowntown.org/index.php?s=tiffanyseries.

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A strike by the University of Missouri’s football team brought down the school’s president. Could similar tactics be used to get campus-sports stars across the country paid?

Read the original article and comments section >

A single weekend has changed the landscape in college sports. At the University of Missouri, where students had been protesting racial slurs and deprivations for more than a month, more than 30 black players announced a football strike on Saturday. On Monday both the campus chancellor and the university system’s president resigned. This swift coup demonstrated a potential for moral and financial power in concerted action by college athletes. The brief Missouri strike raises the prospect that similar tactics could be put to use by college athletes in an uphill struggle for their basic rights. […]

The moment for such a push may not be far off. Public support for the NCAA has declined in recent years and, what’s more, the current system has been the recipient of some less-than-indulgent court rulings. In August, the National Labor Relations Board overturned an earlier decision that would have allowed Northwestern University football players to vote on forming a trade union. Relieved NCAA officials cheered “the right call,” but the NLRB pointedly reserved judgment about whether college players should be legal employees, stressing that jurisdiction was declined largely because labor law does not apply to the many public universities competing with Northwestern in Big Ten sports. The NLRB deliberations raised a startling prospect: that college athletes could achieve union rights even while being denied the ordinary ones that most Americans hold individually, such as the right to seek compensation for work, something NCAA rules strictly forbid.

In September, NCAA lawyers won a mixed reprieve on its rule that college players must forever surrender any right to compensation from sports merchandise bearing their names and images. In the landmark O’Bannon case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit did find the NCAA too restrictive under antitrust law, but the decision overturned a lower court’s corrective order mandating that new earnings be limited to $5,000 per player per year and be sequestered until graduation lest the extra money interfere with an athlete’s studies. While deferring on the question of whether athletes can receive any compensation beyond the costs of attending school, the judges opined that “courts cannot and must not shy away from requiring the NCAA to play by the Sherman Act’s rules.”

College administrators are preparing reluctant lines of retreat. Notre Dame’s president John Jenkins told The New York Times that Notre Dame would support changes in NCAA rules to allow athletes to sell their autographs or otherwise make money of their fame—provided that Notre Dame was not involved. “That seems to be where we are going,” he said. Similarly, the Pac-12 has proposed an amendment allowing players to pursue business opportunities so long as they do not identify or market themselves as athletes.

Disputes over money are straining the NCAA’s unity. Early this year, the five major sports conferences (the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and Southeastern) obtained “autonomy” to promulgate rules that would permit a modest cost-of-living scholarship raise for athletes. These five major sports conferences own the new football playoff system, reaping already an extra $500 million above their $2 billion in annual television revenue. They share none of this aggregate bonanza with the NCAA or its thousand member schools. For now they do let the NCAA collect television’s $770 million annual payment for March Madness, which supplies nearly all NCAA income, but leaders of the five conferences raised a veiled threat to leave and take the basketball tournament with them.

State lawmakers, meanwhile, have stretched in vain to devise legal reinforcement for the economic constraints imposed by the NCAA’s compact among member schools. In 2014, when the NCAA suspended star running back Todd Gurley for four games for selling his autographed jersey, Georgia legislators channeled popular fury. “It hurt our season,” objected Representative Barry Fleming, introducing a criminal bill to incorporate NCAA rules indirectly by scapegoating any sports agent who “entices” an athlete to break them. Fleming lamented that Gurley’s mother “didn’t have funds to properly repair the roof on the trailer she raised him in,” but his bill sought recompense only for Georgia. The “Todd Gurley Law,” approved overwhelmingly in May 2015, authorizes the state to prosecute and sue an offending sports agent for the “loss of scholarships, loss of television revenue, loss of bowl revenue, and legal and other fees…” Although this untested recourse may be wildly impractical, and unconstitutional, the exercise allowed lawmakers to express their frustration with the NCAA.

Pressure has exposed cracks in the NCAA’s professed devotion to the welfare of college athletes. Under prodding from President Theodore Roosevelt, colleges formed the organization in 1906 with a mission to curtail severe and mortal injuries among football players. Even so, defense lawyers filed a blunt disclaimer in wrongful death litigation two years ago: “The NCAA denies that it has a legal duty to protect student-athletes.” This ongoing case arose from head-on “Oklahoma” tackling drills at Frostburg State University in Maryland, during which co-captain Derek Sheely persevered through three days of wooziness and bleeding ear canals before he collapsed to die of brain trauma. Sheely’s parents appealed for an NCAA investigation into possible negligence or worse, but the NCAA closed ranks with Frostburg State. The NCAA’s president Mark Emmert did apologize to U.S. senators in 2014 for “a terrible choice of words created by legal counsel to make a legal argument,” and he emphasized the NCAA’s “clear, moral obligation to do everything we can to support and protect student-athletes.” Yet lawyers continue to resist discovery motions for NCAA communications with Frostburg State about Derek Sheely, arguing that disclosure “may be harmful to the NCAA’s legitimate business interests.”

These business interests remain foreign to the association’s public stance as a tax-exempt nonprofit service for college athletes, chartered to enhance their education. Less-than-lofty reminders of this conflict, such as semi-literate players, drive the NCAA to acquire—and major sports schools to offload—more authority over admissions and other academic standards, even though this function has pushed athletic regulators into the faculty domain. The NCAA juggles conflicting roles in the wake of egregious revelations at the University of North Carolina, which has admitted that some 3,100 students enrolled in phony “paper classes” and 560 forged grades aimed to keep UNC athletes eligible between 1993 and 2011. While reserving judgment and punishment of UNC in the four-year-old scandal, the NCAA is simultaneously a co-defendant with UNCin a multi-million-dollar class action filed by former UNC players who allege educational fraud. NCAA lawyers contend for a notion of academic guardianship short of responsibility, submitting in U.S. District Court “that the NCAA did not assume a duty to ensure the quality of the education student-athletes received at member institutions.”

Sports schools debate vague educational improvements. The PAC-12 is circulating a resolution “to establish a contiguous eight-hour period between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. where athletic activities cannot be required,” which, if passed by the Autonomy Session at next year’s NCAA Convention, would prescribe a sleep break in the grueling sports regimen. One committee proposes to consolidate the many rules about academic misconduct at “one location in the Division I manual.” Another reform would elevate boilerplate language asserting that sports are “a vital component of the educational program and athletes shall be an integral part of the student body.” Beneath this rhetoric, sports schools have rushed to build lavish academic facilities reserved for athletes, such as Texas A&M’s $27 million Nye Center, UNC’s $30 million Loudermilk Center, and Oregon’s $41.7 million Jaqua Center, where tutors accountable to the athletic department supervise a growing portion of the curriculum. As demonstrated by UNC’s track record, this separated sports academy can subject college players to a tragic parody of education, worse than a Division I football team coached by biology professors.

“I think we recognized that all of my football players are at-risk,” Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly admitted of their academic well-being, “all of them—really.” He cited the demands of travel and nonstop training—“playing on the road, playing night games, getting home at 4 o’clock in the morning.” Still, somehow, only one idea provokes a battle cry to defend academic integrity. A right for athletes to seek fair monetary compensation would risk “Armageddon,” as Notre Dame president Jenkins put it.

“That’s when we leave,” he told New York Times reporter Dan Barry. “We will not tolerate that.” He vowed instead to collapse the entire Notre Dame sports machine into sandlot club teams. Shrewd observers have suspected a brazen strategic bluff, but Father Jenkins marshalled ethical and religious defenses grounded in his training. “I don’t think there’s a compulsion,” he said, “or some demand of justice.” He dissected a published charge that NCAA schools violate basic rights of their athletes (disclosure: specifically mine in The Atlantic), and found it “a little overheated.”

“So the thesis is, we exploit these young people for financial gain,” Jenkins began. “Let’s just think about that.” He said Notre Dame takes money from its high-revenue football and basketball teams “to help soccer players play soccer, help fencers fence, help swimmers swim.” This benevolent practice fits the “essential character” of education. A diversion of funds does take place, he concluded, “but that doesn’t seem to be exploitation.”

Aquinas and other theologians would look deeper. Only a tiny piece of captured sports revenue goes to the less marketable athletes. The bulk of it raises a golden pyramid in the sports establishment for head coaches, assistant coaches, broadcasters, strength coaches, advertisers, recruiters, builders, administrators, tutors, and so on. A secondary subsidy gives the facilities and non-student workers in money-losing sports a respectable share of the university brand, suchthat Florida paid its volleyball coach nearly $365,000 in 2009. In context, a noble motive to help swimmers and fencers must be weighed against the underlying conduct toward revenue-producing athletes. Schools pursue an aggressive commercial business outside the classroom by stripping the core talent of basic rights that other citizens take for granted. Indeed, NCAA rules forbid college players to seek any material reward, however slight, for athletic value, condemning their enterprise as uniquely unethical.

NCAA officials maintain that economic constraints on college athletes are vital for their own well-being and academic success. Emmert’s 2014 testimony to U.S. senators included an argument to this effect:

The most important thing for young people in college is to focus on education and earn their degrees. Attempts to label student-athletes as employees rather than students due to their participation in a voluntary athletic activity that establishes no expectation of compensation when they enroll can only blur and, in fact, undermine the focus on education. These attempts are ultimately not in the best interest of the student-athlete or the college environment.

Prominent economists, on the other hand, argue that big-time college sports are a textbook illustration of collusion to rig the labor market against the interest of those athletes. Such arguments put academic leaders and NCAA officials on notice that they may yet have to answer for unjust behavior. Gifts to needy athletes become far less righteous when extracted from others by fiat. If a charitable donation were atonement for ill-gotten gains, every thief would enjoy a handy alibi, and FIFA’s soccer executives would not be facing indictment for misappropriated funds.

Yet many outsiders of good will bridle at the prospect of a right to earn money for college athletes. Some fear selfishly that pay would threaten the collegiate sports they enjoy. Others cling to Socratic nostalgia, sensing that paid players would exacerbate sports greed that never should have taken hold at universities in the first place. College leaders promote both these apprehensions by classifying the college player a “student-athlete” of compound nature, fused together for a highly specialized purpose. Accordingly, the NCAA insists that no one can be eligible for pay and remain “first” or “primarily” a student, nor can any true student be an employee. This mantra defies reality along with common sense. When James Franco enrolled at UCLA while working on the set of Spider-Man 3, no one called him a “student-actor” to confiscate his income so that he could focus on schoolwork.

Franco is unusual as a public figure, but multiple roles abound on every campus. Of roughly 20 million undergraduates in the United States, 4 million have full-time jobs on the side, and 10 million more work part-time in every conceivable occupation. All these students and their teachers are charged to uphold academic integrity in class regardless of the separate responsibilities they manage elsewhere. Outside employment is neither rare nor taboo, which leaves the NCAA’s “student-athlete” regimen an outlier from any norm. Its hybrid pretense harms athletes on both fronts, reducing them to jock status in academic life and pupil-serfdom in commercialized sports.

Behind the calls for reform is moral clarity. It starts with the recognition that the NCAA’s economic restrictions on college athletes are bogus, without justification in law or principle. This is the thrust of an ongoing lawsuit filed by antitrust lawyer Jeffrey Kessler. If he wins, most colleges would scarcely notice, because they host humble but spirited games without scholarships or television contracts. The major sports schools will face massively difficult choices, however, in proportion to the cumulative distortion of their sports business. At least for a while, it will hurt for them to prioritize fairness over convenience and temptation.

Several forces could combine to create needed change. Ironically, the NCAA could come apart in ugly fights over skewed largesse. College players themselves, following the breakthrough example at Missouri, might devise symbolic protests. The courts, or Congress, eventually could confront the NCAA’s teetering hegemony. And colleges could set aside their self-interested bromides to launch a free-ranging inquiry on the relationship between education and the sports phenomenon on campus. No one has proved how or whether those two worlds can be made compatible, but intellectual honesty could light a better path.

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Below, this National Archives account of Wednesday night’s Gala describes a thrilling honor for me.

Christy and Franklin joined me there, along with our nieces Morgan and Madeline all dressed up in ball gowns.

Beforehand, archivists showed us documents from the vaults, including a 1799 petition against kidnapping free blacks into slavery from Philadelphia. The ceremony featured the 8-minute film on view at a link below, plus a lively dialogue in which I tried to keep up with former AG Eric Holder. They stunned me by bringing out all 15 members of our Baltimore gospel ensemble, Soulful Revue. I jumped up to sing with them.

We moved with several hundred guests to an elegant dinner in a normally-closed gallery that houses the 1776 Declaration and the 1787 Constitution. Actor Nicholas Cage did not re-appear from his movies to pilfer our national treasures, which remained safe.

I am deeply grateful to the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, to Eric Holder, and to all who helped make this evening unforgettable.

[…]

National Archives Foundation Honors Taylor Branch with Records of Achievement Award

October 29, 2015

The National Archives Foundation honored American author and Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch with its 2015 Records of Achievement Award at a black-tie gala at the National Archives last night. The honor recognizes Branch’s lifelong work to chronicle the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the history of the Civil Rights movement in his landmark series America in the King Years.

The Records of Achievement Award is an annual tribute given to an individual whose work has cultivated a broader national awareness of the history and identity of the United States through the use of original records, including those preserved by the National Archives.

National Archives Foundation Executive Director Patrick M. Madden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Records of Achievement Award honoree Taylor Branch, Foundation Chair A’Lelia Bundles, and Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero with the 2015 Records of Achievement Award, featuring facsimilies of a redacted document from Mr. Branch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the FBI, as well as a facsimile of that same document, which has recently been declassified. Photo by Pepe Gomez for the National Archives Foundation.

SK__5536-300x200Foundation Chair A’Lelia Bundles, Executive Director Patrick M. Madden, and former Attorney General Eric H. Holder joined Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero in presenting the award.

“As our nation observes the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, it feels especially appropriate to salute Taylor Branch’s meticulous scholarship and his gift for bringing the details of that pivotal era to life,” said Foundation Chair Bundles.

“Branch’s Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative history of the United States during the Civil Rights era has shaped the public’s understanding of this transformative period of American history,” said Archivist of the United States Ferriero.

“The country’s living history is found within the walls of the National Archives. Last night’s event gave us the chance to showcase not just Taylor Branch’s legacy, but the breadth and depth of the stories in the National Archives,” said Foundation Executive Director Madden.

“From marriage equality, to law enforcement engagement with the communities they are sworn to protect and serve, to that most fundamental American right – the right to vote –the need to learn from the civil rights struggles of the past remains vital and urgent,” added Holder.

Mr. Branch’s efforts to preserve the legacy of one of the most influential periods in American history emphasizes the essential value that the National Archives, with facilities throughout the country, continues to provide in recording and protecting American history. National Archives holdings include original records of the Civil Rights movement including the landmark legislation outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin: The Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“I am humbled to join the list of scholars and artists recognized by the National Archives Foundation,” said Taylor Branch. “Because our country is founded on an idea rather than a language or ethnicity, the U.S. National Archives can serve an inspirational purpose: to light the future by confronting the past. I salute your mission.”

20151028_193909-300x168Last night’s gala included a red carpet reception, an awards ceremony in the Archives’ William G. McGowan Theater, and a seated dinner in the Rotunda Galleries, celebrating the public-private partnership between the National Archives and the nonprofit National Archives Foundation. Soulful Revue – the all-male ensemble choir for which Branch serves as Director – made a surprise appearance, with a shocked Branch joining them in an impromptu performance.

Previous recipients of the Foundation’s award include: Steven Spielberg, Tom Brokaw, Ken Burns and David McCullough.

The Gala and Records of Achievement Award Ceremony is made possible with the leadership support of AT&T. Major support provided by Governor Jim Blanchard and Janet Blanchard, and the Maris S. Cuneo Foundation. Additional event support from Marvin F. Weissberg.

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