Episode 7 – Paying Athletes and the College Cartel

Episode Details

Should college athletes get paid? If someone or some school is willing to do so, we sure think they should be! In this episode we chat with Andy Schwarz about paying college athletes, the college cartel the NCAA presides over, and the history of how we got here. This is an excellent episode and we hope to have Andy back soon.

Our Guest

Our guest for this episode is Andy Schwarz. You can follow Andy on Twitter and his blog Sportgeekonomics.

Andy Schwarz is an antitrust economist with a subspecialty in sports economics. Notably, Andy was the case manager for the NFL’s economic expert in L.A. Raiders v. NFL and for Plaintiffs’ economic experts in O’Bannon v. NCAA and the economic expert for the Keller v. NCAA settlement class. He has testified to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce, participated on another U.S. Congressional panel on college sports, and has served as an economic expert in a wide variety of state and federal litigation. Andy is one of the co-founders of OSKR and served as President/Managing Partner for the firm’s first three years.

Andy is also a Co-Founder of the HBL and serves as the Chief Innovation Officer. Andy assists with innovative decision-making, strategic planning, and setting the League’s strategic priorities.

Andy has been featured on ESPN, in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, Bloomberg News, Sports on Earth, and USA Today. He is a frequent contributor to Vice Sports and Deadspin and has written for Slate, Forbes.com, 538.com, and ESPN.com. He is featured in Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA by Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss. Andy’s academic papers have analyzed secondary ticket markets, law and economics topics, the antitrust questions inherent in NCAA bylaws, and the economics of virtual goods. He has co-authored a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Sports Economics and in the forthcoming College Athletes’ Rights and Well-Being: Critical Perspectives on Policy and Practice.

Andy holds an M.B.A. from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, an A.B. in history from Stanford University, and an M.A. in history from Johns Hopkins.

Episode Resources

If you want to get a good look at Andy’s arguments for paying college athletes, a good place to start is his article, Excuses, Not Reasons – 13 Myths about (not) Paying College Athletes. You can also download the PDF version of this article here.

We also recommend following Andy at this blog, Sportgeekonomics.

While you are at it, go learn a bit more about  Andy’s efforts with The Historical Basketball League.