Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look at the recent change in college athletics that has allowed student athletes to make money using their name image in lightness.
And consider whether we are now on a slippery slope to college athletes being paid salaries from their universities.
We'll also discuss some recent research out of Japan that claims to have demonstrated that humans are capable of developing a sixth sense.
Joining me today is a man who is the opening act, the headliner and the after party. Tunde. Ogon. Lana Tunde, are you still out here moving? Cool.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, man, but that reminds me why I'm so tired all the time. That's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work to be the opening act, the headline. And don't forget about the guy cleaning up the stage, you know, oh my goodness, sweeping all the stuff off the floor.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Yeah, man, it's a lot of work, man. You're the hardest working man in podcasting, man, and in wealth management. There we go.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Not really, but go ahead.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: All right, now we're recording this on September 7, 2021. And this summer we've seen a huge change in college athletics because for the first time college athletes are able to receive compensation, monetary compensation as opposed to just non monetary items like scholarships and books as far as what's being connected to their them participating in college sports.
Now, previously, the National Collegiate Athletic association or the ncaa, which governs most of college sports, had prohibited college athletes from being paid or for receiving money based on, or being paid, you know, for, for doing the sport or for receiving money based on the name, image and likeness, which you could think of as like endorsements, like endorsement income or even income for making an appearance. You're making, you show up somewhere, somebody gives you money to make an appearance or to sign autographs or something like that. It's based on them personally.
And the NCAA did this. While in some sports the NCAA and the colleges continually opened up new revenue sources for themselves and some sports, oftentimes considered quote, unquote, revenue generating sports, started to earn dollar figures in the high millions and collectively in the billions.
So following several legal setbacks in court, as well as several states enacting laws which would act to bar the NCAA from punishing athletes who received name, image and likeness, or nil compensation from sources outside of the school, now college athletes are able to negotiate deals and earn compensations based on their name, image and likeness. And this was, you know, basically the reins were taken off on July 1, 2021.
So to get us going tune day, what's your, what's been your reaction to seeing all this nil money flow through college sports? And do you think this is going to fundamentally change college sports?
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Great questions. I think so. Let me answer the second one first, which is yes, I think it'll fundamentally change college sports, but that that'll have to play itself out. I mean, I can't predict where that spirals to, but I do think this is the start of something big. And how do I feel about it? It's interesting. I mean I don't really feel anything, but I would say I feel more positive than negative about it.
As a former college athlete myself in one of the major, I would say revenue generating sports into being NCAA basketball.
I remember being that kid that had to do two a day practices and all that. And you know, it was work for.
You're basically called an amateur, but you're treated and have to perform as a professional when you're in those high level competitive sports at the college.
And so I would say that that's why I feel more positive than negative. I think it creates more of a fairer atmosphere for the athlete. And especially if we're a capitalist country that believes in people being compensated for their work, it kind of goes in line with that. But again, as we're going to discuss today, I'm sure this is such a new thing and a bit of a wild west that there's a lot going on and I'm sure a lot that will change in the coming years. So.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean, I'd say to piggyback on what you're saying, like capitalist country also we believe in markets, I thought. And so to me this is something that's long overdue. The deal that was set up with the athletes being barred from receiving compensation was formulated in a different time. So I'm not even going to go into whether how sinister it was and whether the people there were trying to have plantations and all. Like there's a lot of inflammatory rhetoric around it, but it was just a different time. The rules that were set up in the early 1900s, there weren't billions of dollars of TV money flowing through college sports at that time. You know, people would have athletic competitions and sell tickets and that's it. And so it was a different game at that point, so to speak. And so it was never a bargain for exchange, meaning the students weren't able to negotiate with the college and say, okay, well here's the deal. If I'm going to come here and play this sport, here's what I want. And then we're, we agree to this and then it's a contract and then everybody gets what they want. It was a take it or leave it type of situation. And so with, with an extreme imbalance of power. So I think that it's good that we're removing these restrictions again. It's long overdue. It's a change in the business of college sports. More though in the change in college sports. I think college sports are going to continue to operate as they have. What we have to recognize, which I don't think people think about a lot of times, is that what we're watching actually is an entertainment business that, that has been built on top of college sports. A lot of the issues that we see as far as the, where you could say it's a financial injustice or there's people being taken advantage of in college sports are only in the revenue generating sports where there's so much money being made above and beyond anything the college is doing. ESPN just shows up and says, hey, here's a check for $500 million. And those are the places where we have this issue.
And that's because it's part of the entertainment game now. It's part of Disney's showing up, Disney owning espn, showing up. They're changing the game, they're changing the calculus. And so our perception of things and what's going on, the rules that we're operating under have to be updated to account for that. And so if we're going to do entertainment business stuff, it doesn't matter if you're 12 or 14 or 16 or whatever. If you're in the entertainment business and you perform it on television, you get paid. And so when we're looking at college sports, at minimum the athletes should be able to capitalize on their own notoriety, which again is something that would be consistent with the principles of American economics.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think there's something else to be said.
Well, I shouldn't say that. Let me restate what I'm saying. What you're saying is accurate in that we've seen, I think it's 115 years since kind of the NCAA began and college sports. So to going back what you first started with is so much has changed over that period of time with everything right. Like not only just college sports and all that, but our society.
So the, it's, it's, it's a natural progression for the NCAA to change. And it's interesting because this follows a lot of other kind of traditions that build up in our American culture over time, which is certain industries do become monopolistic. So one could say the tobacco industry, fossil fuel industry, let's say the defense industry.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: It's almost the natural progression of things. When someone does really well, they tend to become monopolistic and they put a lot of energy towards crowding out competition as opposed to continued innovation. But go ahead.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Correct.
So let's say that the NCAA represents that similar trajectory where like you said, the in 1905, selling peanuts at a football game or something really just went to pay for, I'm sure that the expenses of the day, maybe some extra went to the coffers of the school or something like that.
And then that's evolved like we made the allusion to the other industries into this massive multi billions of dollars revenue organization that feels threatened anytime someone has a different idea for how things, things should be done.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: And what I think this represents too, like you and I have observed in many other areas over the last, let's say 20 years, is the continued disruption of the Internet into our, what we have built as a traditional kind of culture and society over the second half, let's say, of the 20th century. So in preparing for today, I couldn't help, even though I didn't read about this name in any of the articles that know I read in preparing, remember the name Charles O' Bannon and his brother Ed O', Bannon, the basketball players from UCLA in the early to mid-90s. Yes. And they were the first, I think, at least kind of nationally recognized, well known college athletes to bring this up. And they've been pursuing it for like 25 years. And I thought, yeah, Ed O' Bannon.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Just, you know, Ed O' Bannon is one of the named plaintiffs on one of the class action suits going after the ncaa because the NCAA again going to the name image and likeness issue and the television issue was still he's, he's been out of college for 25 years and they're still showing his, his game games that he played in on television and he gets nothing for that. Whereas like normally if, when, when you see reruns on TV or things like that, the actors and those things get royalties continually. And so it's like, hold on, how are they still showing old. I can understand you show. You showed it when I was in college when.
But you guys are showing the reruns and making more money on that. And I still get nothing out of that. And so that's another one of the cases where the NCAA has taken a beating is one of the Ed o' Bannon case. But go ahead.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's where I think the Internet has changed the nature of the dynamic of this argument over that 25 year period. Because I think, you know, when it was the, let's say the early mid-90s, and you are having these conversations, there weren't many other outlets for the athletes to, to, to, let's say, have other areas of compensation or, or, or exposure. But over the last decade or so, you know, with the advent of social media and just the Internet itself, Even things like YouTube and to be able to, to create, let's say for again, going back to basketball, if you wanted to create videos on how to shoot a good great jump shot or how to dribble without looking down, you know, now an 18, 19 year old college kid could make that video and get, you know, 1 million views.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: People do that all the time and regular students do that kind of stuff, you know.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: But let's say the kid starts getting offers that someone wants to put ads on his YouTube page.
That kind of, that's different because like you could be a student athlete and go work at McDonald's that, you know, you just couldn't be compensated for playing your sport cook, so to speak.
And so now someone could say, okay, well they're not being compensated directly, they're being paid ads for doing something they'd be doing anyway. So I think the Internet and the.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Change though would be that previously that would have been disallowed. Like there was a kicker five years ago or so that had YouTube videos up and the NCAA make him take, made him take it down or he was going to be ineligible because he was going to make money off of those YouTube videos through advertising and so forth. So the issue has really been brought to a head.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: But that's what I mean is it creates this environment for these discussions to come up. Because remember let's say 25 years ago, prior to the Internet proliferation, I mean, think about the amount of infrastructure you would have needed to just make some videos, right? You would have need a production team, some cameramen. It did this whole, you know, that would have been, and then a distribution thing and it would have been a whole like.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: All right, well but let me say this though, because I think that it was just a higher bar for who could do it. Like less people were very recognizable and could really grow their own brand so the bigger stars could have endorsed car dealerships or could have shown up and done autographs or something like that. Like star power is always been able, been marketable, so to speak. Nowadays though, you could be a third string, like somebody you know on a team and yeah, just have a YouTube video about doing something or a video series or something. So it definitely has opened it up, the possibilities. One thing I want to push back on you though. I don't think it'll fundamentally change the sport because the rich or the sports, because in revenue sports in particular, I would say the rich programs already dominate. It's not like Little Sisters of the Poor is out here beating Ohio State in football. Either way. Ohio State's, you know, Ohio State, you know, Alabama's Alabama, and they're that way because they had the most money in the first place. And so now they, they're going to be more money flowing through. Well, hey, I mean, that's kind of the same advantage giving the rich person more money.
It's not going to fundamentally change anything. And so now whether that's, you think that's good or not is another issue that may throw off competitive balance, assuming that it could be thrown off anymore. But on the flip side, and again, this is why I don't think, I don't think it'll change fundamentally change. It'll be changes around the margins, might change some of the winners, some of the losers. But I think more college athletes will be inclined to stay, particularly in these revenue sports. It stay in sport, it stay in school longer if you, you may delay going to the NFL for a year if you're making half a million dollars a year or something like that, or you know, from showing up in car dealerships or you know, doing appearance fees here and there. You may wait or NBA. I'm a marginal NBA prospect, but my, my family needs money, you know, but hey, I'll just pull in some money here, you know, in college with this name, image and likeness thing. And I'll stay in school, I'll get my education and you know, I'll. And so that may throw off the competitive landscape also where schools without having to spend more money themselves are able, like the students stay longer. That helps out society people stay longer in school. So I think this could have positive effects as well. But I don't think it again, fundamentally change. No, because basically the winners in college sports and any sport, not just the revenue generators, are the ones that have the most commitment and the alumni have the most commitment, they donate the most money and so forth. So the best swim Schools are the ones where the alumni and the school put the most money into the swim team. And so those places already have an advantage. We're not. This isn't. This isn't socialism in terms of. Everybody has the same thing.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That's an interesting point about the socialism because in one of the articles, it brings up some interesting arguments and discussions that we were used to having over general economics, but not over sports. So one of the.
I can't remember which. I think it was Clemson, the football coach was saying how he believes that it could create jealousy and unfairness in the locker room because you could have this one star player commanding all this money, but then the teammates feeling like, you know, you're only this good cause you're also on a team. Like, what about us? And so he was kind of saying he actually used the term spread the wealth around. And I just thought, wow, an SEC football coach from South Carolina is using, you know, sounding like a communist socialist right now.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Because we're not. Hold on, hold up. Americans are definitely socialist when it comes to sports. Like, there's no two way. Like, what in capitalism or free markets would a draft. Where would a draft fall in that. Well, salary cap, like all of the things we do with our sports are socialists and everything like that.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: But that's why I said it's interesting because the discussion when it's related around sports isn't seen with such hostility as it is when you have it around general economics now.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: It's taken as a given.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I get it. That sports is a much smaller, you know, fishbowl than let's say our larger society with 330 million people. But I just find it interesting when I'm reading that from an SEC football coach and I'm like, I think no.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Clemson's acc, though, it's still the same thing.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: But it's still South Carolina.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: It's still South Carolina. Yeah.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Still Southeastern. But you're right, it is ACC as a conference. So let me stand corrected. But it's funny that I just was thinking, like, he's right, obviously, that it takes a lot to create.
You know, there's. Everyone's on the team is getting beat up in practice, working hard, and clearly the star player is the star player, but they're not a star. Right, but, but, but then, but then it's funny because then I was thinking about the same thing, like with the original spread their wealth around when Joe the Plumber was trying to catch Obama, you know, and off guard is like when he said, you know, you didn't build. If you're a business owner, you didn't build the roads, and that got your employees or the schools that educated him. So it's just funny that.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Hold on, Tunde, he's not right, though. All of sports, that's an issue. Like the. The stars in football and pro football get paid more. The stars? Does Mike. Should Michael Jordan make the same as everybody else on his team?
[00:17:26] Speaker B: No, I get it. It's just funny that the way sports.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Work, locker rooms have survived that pressure, you know, for a long time.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: No, but that's what I'm saying. It's just funny because it would be like. I mean, obviously not a coach, but it would be like somebody in a position of authority saying, like, oh, yeah, that. That Wall street firm, you know, the managing partner, you know, I know he's great at what he does, but, you know, why should he be getting $40 million bonus and the secretary only gets, you know, $80,000 salary? It's just funny. So it lets sports be the area that brings these things out, which is funny to me, like, versus, you know, other areas.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: It's hilarious, man. It is. No, it's hilarious that that's always stuck out to me is how anti capitalist, anti market Americans are with sports. And we don't even realize it. Like, if you look at European soccer, the best players go to whoever will pay them the most when they come into the league. Like, there's no, like, oh, well, you get drafted by this team. And so therefore you have to go that if they did that in regular industry, people would be like, are you crazy? I didn't. I'm not graduating from college. And then just going to whatever company drafts me and whatever city they tell me to go to. Like, that's ridiculous. Like, and so a lot of the things we do with.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: And also to add to this, since they don't have the same NCAA stuff, they start letting kids getting paid to play sports at 13, 14. Yeah, hold on.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: So do we in tennis. So do we.
And so with sports, we're just funny as Americans. Like, we are. We are all about socialism when it comes to sports. And I can't explain it because people don't even seem to be aware of it. But I do want to keep the conversation moving, though. Like, do you think this is the first salvo in the march toward paying college athletes, like, just a salary? Like, the school pays them here, you know, you're going to play sports, here's your stipend, or here's your, you know, for that and do you think it should be meaning after seeing this, do you think college athletes should be and or ultimately will be paid?
[00:19:21] Speaker B: So answer again yes and yes. So let me break that down.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: It surprised me there. I thought she was in on the other side.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Well, do I think they should be paid? Yeah, I mean some sort of compensation I think is deserving for what they're doing. Right. And so.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: But we're talking beyond a scholarship.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. That's sort of, you know, beyond current.
What is considered a compensation? Because you're right. Considering today's definition, the NCA would argue that, you know, paying a full tuition, room and board and books for the average good school in any state could be upwards of, you know, 20 to 30,000 a year. Then you've got meal plans, you've got other things, you know, compensation. So one could argue that all student athletes on scholarships are getting compensated right now. Whereas they do and they do argue, yeah, the non student athletes, you know, their families have to pay for all this stuff so. Or they have to go to work and pay for it themselves, the students. So one can make that argument. But that's what I was going to say is that. So I do think it will go beyond that.
And now we can take that branch of the tree and it can make much more little twigs and branches because I'm sure there's arguments about how much should they be compensated, should there be. I've heard of these ideas for years about creating some sort of trust or what do you lawyers have escrow type of funds where because they're so young that let's say the average person were to graduate at 22. Even at that age giving someone a pile of money may not be the best thing. So that maybe it's almost like a deferred compensation plan for an executive.
The student athlete gets their money deferred for 10 or 15 years. So maybe by the time they're 35 they can access money that now they have a family, they're a young professional and they may be wiser in using those funds. So all those types of compensation to me are. Discussions are legitimate. And then remind me of the other part of your question.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Well, no, that was mainly it. Do you think that it is and should be? And you said both you think that it is should be. I mean for me I think that one point to remember or to think about with this is that like when you have you talk about revenue sports, you talk about non revenue sports. The revenue sports are the ones that earn a Profit by and large, meaning, you know, between attendance money and the money earned in the stadium and the money earned in merchandising and then television, it makes more than it costs to run the program. So with revenue sports, commonly they are the money that they earn above and beyond goes to the university, goes to subsidize other sports and so forth, but then also goes to things that they think will give them an advantage in their sport. Like they build new facilities for the sport, new locker rooms or new entertainment for the athletes every couple of years, $50 million, you know, centers and stuff like that.
And so that is like kind of where that extra money for the colleges go to. Now, I think the answer is not as simple though, because the I don't look at the bargain of you play a sport, we give you a scholarship as inherently unfair. Where I think this becomes imbalanced is when you start doing other things with that product. So in my view, yes, athletes should be paid. If the college is going to turn their sport into an entertainment product.
If it's just going to be about intercollegiate competition, then I do believe that adds value to the academic experience to that, that adds value to the person and so forth. So the original mission, like I said, I'm not even going to have to get into or I'm going to get into.
How sinister was or was it, was it sinister to promote competition, intercollegiate competition and so forth? I think the issue is the TV money and the merchant. So if you're making, if you're doing things beyond simply just putting on an athletic competition performance, then that's when you need to start compensating the athletes. So it could be a sport by sport, school by school thing, in my view.
But I don't think in general you should just pay the athletes just because they're participating in the sport in the same way that if you're participating in the band, I don't think you should just get, get paid for that beyond like you can get a scholarship for going to the band. So. But again, but if you're doing band competitions and they're putting you on abc, dancing with the bands or something like that, then yeah, you should get some money for that because again, then you're turning what is a collegiate activity into an entertainment product. If you're in class and they decided to broadcast your class and a million people watch it, you should get money for being like, that's an appearance right there.
If you're on television doing that, you get a royalty for that. So I think again, that's why I try to look at this as you have college sports, but then you also have this entertainment product. And I think the two of those we have to look at separately. But what I do think here is that at minimum we're seeing the dogma fall apart about this whole amateurism thing, that it means that the athletes have to take a vow of, of, of, you know, just not making any money whatsoever. We got to keep them poor. Because I don't that that crusade is silly to me. Like you of course should be able to make money on your name, image and likeness. And again, anything that's going to turn something in an entertainment product, you should make money on that too.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that's my, my own personal experience. That's where I felt, even at the age I was in college, you know, late teens, early 20s, that this whole thing of an amateur was a joke. Because the way that we were pushed, you know, we weren't amateurs. I mean we were. One of my friends said it. Well at that time we were in our mid, late 20s after school when my buddy who I played with in college said this. He said, you know, when we were playing NCAA basketball, we were Olympic quality athletes.
And I, when he said it, I was like, you know what, you're right.
I mean I had I think 7 or 8% body fat. We were literally lifting weights six times, six, six days a week during the preseason, we'd have two a days. I mean, I remember being so tired, physically drained that you just slept. I mean, and that's the sad part about athletes getting a bad rap, being stupid and all that stuff.
Number one, you can't be stupid and remember all those plays in a football playbook. Because you know, the first time I ever saw a college playbook on the foot from the football team, I realized that I'm glad I played basketball.
So I tip my hat off to the football guys on that one.
But anybody that knows any high level athlete knows that they're intelligent human beings, just, you know, their mind to be able to do what they do, this has to have, you know, certain levels of intelligence.
But it's very difficult to apply yourself scholastically when you're dead tired. And so you know, that you know, to try and you know, put kids in that environment and assume that, you know, they're just going to be these students that are just playing this sport on the side is a joke.
And so that, that leads me to kind of some of the concerns I see because I saw some of these things when I played, you Know, I saw guys getting, you know, paid under the table. I saw guys getting, instead of cash, maybe compensated with everything from sneakers to automobiles. I saw guys getting, you know, their families getting promised stuff from coaches that were then not delivered. You know, so those. I saw some of that with my own eyes. And there's been well documented over the years when these things have come out into the media. So I could see similar things happening.
Because anytime you have money and young people, there's always room. Well, anytime you have money anywhere, but definitely when you have young people involved, there's room for things to go wrong. And I think right now where my concern is is that there's no regulation within this nil space yet because it's so new.
So I feel like this could be like the wild west for a while and we're going to probably hear some crazy stories or bad things happen to people before, I guess regulators are able to find the seams and the cracks in order to fill them.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: You know, it's interesting you say that, because I would think that we were in the wild, wild west before because when it was, when it was something that you weren't allowed to do, then you push it into the black market. And so therefore you actually make it more ripe for exploitation. At least now it's all in the open, so you can't leverage. In the old days, you could give somebody money and then leverage them and say, look, if, because I gave you this money, if I tell people, you're going to be ineligible. So now you need to do whatever I tell you to do. That's that. That kind of thing is removed now. So actually bringing it into the light would clean it up a little bit, at least. Again, based on some of the things we say we believe as Americans, you know, Sunshine law in Florida even, like you bring things into the light to try to get some of the corruption out.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Well, I'm not saying that it's bad that it's being brought into light. I'm just saying it's going to. Because there's a change. There's going to be opportunists who take advantage of the kind of chaos and the disruption within this change moment. And also the there, there aren't, you know, regulations on how this is going to be dealt with. So one of the things that came to mind there was a good article that we had in terms of preparing for this that dealt with boosters and kind of the, you know, the alumni who are wealthy who usually donate and try and, you know, steer student athletes, let's say at the high school level of going to their, their school, their alma mater. And so it talked about. It's funny because this article was about the University of Miami here in South Florida. Right. Remember that the most the country, you know, let's say that are older than 30, can remember that the University of Miami Hurricanes, one of the premier football institutions of the late 20th century.
And so this guy is an owner of a gym in Miami and he's offered to pay the entire Miami roster $500 a month to promote his chain of gyms on social media. Now, for someone outside of South Florida, that might not sound like a big deal, but you and I know how big the Miami Hurricanes are down here and that I can assume that if you had all these kids and, you know, real athletes from the team promoting this guy on social media, he'll probably get a huge following. And that could be great for his numbers, right? So I did the math. 500amonth times, let's say a hundred players is 50,000amonth. So that's 600,000 a year that it may cost him to do this. But if he makes an extra 10 million from, you know, having more people come to his gym, selling more merchandise, blah, blah, blah, then it's a good investment for him. And my point is, is saying that so that on its face, necessarily isn't right or wrong. All I'm saying is that there's. I can see a lot of stuff going wrong in that environment because let's just say some boosters kind of collude and say, you know what, this is a great idea. Let's give them some extra money. Let's have them pay 2000amonth to each kid.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Hold on, hold on. That's the second part of his plan, is to recruit other businesses around the town to just to do that, to increase that monthly distribution to the players. But hold on. So if you're saying you have a problem with that, you're saying you have a problem with capitalism, man, like that is the way capitalism works.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: I'm not really saying I have a problem with it or I don't. I'm just identifying. This is where I could see potential issues in the future. Because think about it. South Florida is a thriving community, big economy, 8 million people.
What about an area like Purdue, you know, Indiana? Are there small businesses going to have the ability and to be able to command the same type of dollars to pull together to, to buy student athletes out of high school? I mean, that's all I'm saying is That I can see a lot of room where, okay, this might not go right, but the next five years.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Purdue can't compete with Miami now anyway, like, so that's what I'm saying. Like Alabama would be able to do that. Ohio State would be. That's my point. The imbalance is already baked in like the schools with the resources right now. Dominate is kind of my point. So, yes, your concern is real and is legitimate, but that's how the market system works. Like there are winners and there are losers. And the winners oftentimes are either the big guy or the guy who has the new idea. But I don't want to get bogged down in this. There's one other thing I wanted to mention with this as well and why I think this is a positive, and that's with Title nine, which deals mainly with making sure that male and female athletes are treated fairly and so forth, that you're not favoring the males or whatever. And so one benefit, I think, to the NIL approach, again, is that you get paid based on. From sources out of the school, based on your own level of notoriety or ability to market yourself. And also what I was speaking about is in terms of entertainment pride, if you considered entertainment product and you are compensated based on being on television, I think you can avoid issues where if you're just talking about paying everybody, you really have to start trying to consider how you're going to value everybody. I think you need some way to independently value people. And that's why I look at the entertainment standpoint. So from the standpoint of looking at this and saying, okay, we're going to do. To do nil, I don't think you have concerns as far as males and females being systematically or from the setup standpoint, being treated unfairly. So I think that's a positive that should be mentioned as well. That basically because there's female athletes that are doing well. One interesting thing about the NIL thing as well is sometimes athletes in more obscure sports, because it's a niche, are able to do very well here as well. It's not just the quarterback of Alabama who's making a million dollars a year. It's some diver in the middle of somewhere because all the people who know about diving know about that person. And so you can market to a specific, particular niche here. So it really does. It puts it into the market. And if we're going to say we put our faith into the market with a lot of these things, then this is what it is. There's going to be you know, consequences that we're not crazy about. There's going to be things that we are. We like about it. And yeah, we can use regulation in the future to try to address things that we may not be comfortable, that we don't think create a equitable outcome. But ultimately, you know, with market, things sometimes get a little messy.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So we can move on to the next topic. I wanted to discuss this with you. You had sent this to me. I believe you sent this one to me as well. But I thought this was fascinating.
There was this study coming out of Japan and it looked at basically, some scientists from Japan believe they demonstrated that humans can develop a sixth sense of echolocation, which is using sound waves bouncing off of things to determine the relative positioning of things. So if you're in a room, there's a lot of noise being made, your eyes are closed, but because of the way the sound bounces off the walls and other objects, you can identify what's going on in the room without seeing it, meaning the position of things relative to you, similar to what bats use and so forth when they're navigating in the dark and so forth. So what was your thought on this, on the idea that humans can develop a sixth sense in looking at echolocation?
[00:34:10] Speaker B: It was very interesting.
My thought was curiosity and also, I would say, continued march down this road of learning and understanding that we have a lot more going on, like with us as humans and also just kind of nature and our environment and our connection to it than I think we understand.
And that we've lost some of these, you know, almost this kind of knowledge, whether kind of a, let's say if it's an emotional or intuitive type of knowledge versus more not so much an intellectual knowledge about the environment. And then the other thing it made me think about was a documentary I saw years ago about a kid named Ben Underwood. So you can Google the kid up.
And he's blind. He lost his vision at 3 years old, I think, due to some sort of tumors in his eyes. So he actually had his eyeballs removed. So he's literally like can't see anything.
And he has these prosthetic eyes that he puts in just to not, you know, scary, I guess. And he developed naturally on his own echolocation and he does these clicking sounds. And in the documentary, you see all he's doing constantly is walking around going like that.
And he uses no walker, he doesn't have a seeing eye dog, nothing. And he's able to basically live like a normal person. Like you or I, because through his clicking it basically he has created an echolocation in his own mind. And so he can see the world that way, literally almost like a visual through the sounds.
So it got me thinking about things like that that I've learned over the years and then things I've learned more recently, like when I share with you the documentary I saw on Netflix, Fantastic Fungi, about psychedelics. And I've never tried psychedelics, but just made me curious that, that psychedelics actually can create new neural pathways in the mind.
And then the other one I saw recently was about humans and animals.
And because, you know, there's been over the years people like the dog whisperers or the clairvoyance who can kind of say they can talk, you know, Dr. Doolittle types that talk to animals.
And then there was like, there's been some scientific studies that have been able to show that at some point during human evolution, at one point we may have had the ability to communicate with animals at more of an emotional level before we began to have what we now consider, I guess, and know of as human consciousness and intellect. And then at some point we broke away from that. But some people may actually just from genetic or brain chemistry be able to still tap into that side of the human experience.
It's interesting, you throw a lot out.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: There because like I now I think that's amazing what you said about the Underwood guy. And just the difference in what this study coming out of Japan is in that is only one of testing and verification. Like, you always have anecdotal reports of people being able to do this or people being able to do that. And the question is always, can you replicate that in a controlled environment, in a lab type of thing? And so when you can replicate it, then from a scientific standpoint, a lot of times our society will more accepted. Okay, this is something, this isn't an anomaly. This isn't just word of mouth. This is. We can replicate this. We can set up conditions and replicate it. So that's kind of scientific method type of stuff. But it's the same concept, basically. It's the same thing they're studying. But I'll say, I don't think this is a sixth sense though. I think this is just a finely in tuned and developed hearing.
You know, you're hearing, your hearing is based on, on perceiving vibrations around you. And that's, that's what this is as well. I think it's more, more in tune, more, more developed than what we may walk around with normally and so I'm not saying this to down it, it's still amazing. But it's not a sixth sense. The other things you were talking about, the kind of telepathic or some type ability to connect with another being without any type of. Or just through the mind. That would be a sixth sense, that would be something. And yeah, there's people that can say they can do this or do that with animals or anything like that. So I look at that as more of a sixth sense. And then what you said about the fungi, that what I've always looked at that is just something how you can. That releases kind of impediments in your mind that may be constructed on purpose but may not. You know, but, but there to it kind of opens up your experience, makes you possibly more aware of these other things that can, you can do with your brain or and so forth. So. But those are the kind of things I look at more as sixth sense. Like telepathic, you know, telepathic connections and so forth. Or some type of emotional, spiritual. Spiritual connection or communication would be more of a sixth sense. So that was like I said, I kind of pushed back like hold up, this is just good hearing, you know, this is, this is hearing vibration.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: But no, but it's different because think about what they're saying, echolocation, you're talking like bats and shark type of stuff. So it isn't just good hearing.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: It'S.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Actually being able to have a different type of sense of the world like our environment that we kind of can't comprehend like you and I right now in our normal state of being.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: I disagree.
They're using hearing to put a three dimensional mapping of what's around them. We use seeing sight because that's what we're able to do. But a shark can smell blood, you know, what miles away or something like that. It's still smell though. It's just finely in tuned. It's finally refined that, that it can allow, it can allow you to do more with the same sense. That's kind of my point there. Is it?
[00:39:54] Speaker B: No, but I think it's different than smell though. Because you're right. Obviously smelling a drop of blood a mile from you is still smelling. You're right, direct, you know, it's the same exact thing as if that drop of blood was in your face, you know. And so, but what we're saying here is it's using the sound.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: Sound waves, which is what hearing is.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: No, but using the sound waves to create the same ability which like you're Saying the light waves create your, allow your eyes to do so. It's actually taking a different thing like sound and vibration versus light waves. Like, you know.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Well, no, but, but we take sound on ourself. Here's the difference. Basically, this is the space.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: No, but it's allowing you to make a three dimensional creation in your mind about your environment through sound versus it's.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Not a sense is what I'm saying. It's still the sense of sound. It's not a different sense, but it's.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: Allowing your mind to create a different, like to receive it differently, to create an image in your mind with sound.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: But what I'm saying is that's not a sense. You're not sensing anything new. You're able to do something more with the sense you already have. It's essentially saying we, lots of animals know how to make sounds verbally. Dogs can bark, but they can't articulate words the way we can. So we both have the ability to do that. We can just do more with that. And so that's, that's what it is. And we don't go back down to.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: What we're saying about even things like, like the animal whispering and all that, because one could extrapolate that out, right, to other things that humans have dealt with for eons. Things like ghosts, supernatural activity. I mean, it's funny because my wife always gets massive headaches right before it rains.
Something about the pressure and this and that, and I don't get them, but just her body is wired maybe to react to the earth's magnetic field different than me, basically based on how it rains or whatever. So what I'm saying is that these are things. That's what I'm saying is that these are things that most likely are in us and have been in us since we've evolved out of being primates. The difference is that because our brain, our conscious brain can only handle so much as we filled up our consciousness with other things like language and emotional states and all that, we've probably, you know, minimized.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: It also optimizes. Think about it like this. It also optimizes. So if our sight wasn't as good and we've, we. You see this like the example you gave with Underwood. When your sight isn't as good, your brain then looks to your other senses in order to figure out how to, you know, enhances those, or really maybe not enhances, but enhances what it can do with those in order to compensate for that. And so yeah, like, but again, that's the Only thing I like. And we don't get bogged down. I just like when you said there are some animals that can sense the Earth. Earth's magnetic. Magnetic field and navigate with that like that. To me, that's a. That's. That's something that we're not doing at all. Like, it's not like we're not. We're doing it, but we're not doing it that well. Like, we're not doing that at all. Or, you know, the. Yeah, the ghosts and some kind of spiritual. I think there's a whole bunch going on, more than what we know, you know, like, so well, you know, it's.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: A good example, too, that you and I probably have seen or not probably we have seen. And I'm sure a lot of the audience may have seen it. I'm sure you can get a YouTube video. You ever see those guys back in the days that would find water with a stick?
Like, literally what I'm saying, like, walk into a field and. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, that. That's like something humans did. Like, normal.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Like, how do you find water? Like, literally, like me and you sitting there stranded out there in the middle of nowhere. I mean, we couldn't find water like that. We're just not in tune with that.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a high ability of either. Of either they can hear something or they can feel something, or it may.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Be a magnetic field thing. Like, maybe they have just a sense of certain. Where the Earth, you know, pools liquid. I don't know. Or maybe how the Earth is shaped, where water would pool.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Or under the ground. And that's what I'm saying is that, like, you and I are equipped with that because we're human beings. It's just that we have never, like, tapped into that or been taught how to do it. And so that's why you need really.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: To, you know, life or death, you better learn this or you're going to die type of thing.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, it's like, even with.
I mean, the pandemic's been interesting because it's brought up all this stuff about our healthcare and all that again. And it's just a reminder that almost every human ailment, there has been a cure found in nature by humans over thousands of years.
The different, you know, going back to mushrooms and fungus the different ways. I mean, the first, remember we did the thing about vaccines, the earliest vaccines were when people would let fungus grow on bread, and then they would put that moldy bread On a wound.
[00:44:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: I mean, people understood thousands of years ago that that kind of nature between certain bacteria and certain natural things and then our bodies and so, you know.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: But you shouldn't even put it in the terms that we use it because they didn't understand it as bacteria.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: They understood it just in terms of the interaction of different.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: Yeah, like nature. Yeah, and that's what I was going to say. I was just about to say that. That, you know, they didn't have PhDs and research books filled with stuff. Right. They couldn't put a name like we can to a molecule and how it affected another molecule. But they understood. And this goes back to maybe some of that, you know, Eastern way of thinking, the flows of energy and kind of just that, that kind of spirit of life. That is something I think we've lost in this kind of Western industrial age of.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: Well, and you shouldn't overstate it, though. You shouldn't overstate it because not everyone in ancient times, older times, understood that stuff. Certain cultures did. And, you know, because the world wasn't as connected, you know, those cultures did, other cultures didn't. And you know, like you either were in a culture that did or you're in a culture that stuck bitches on you. And, you know, but even with that.
[00:45:41] Speaker B: Even leeches, in a way, was an understanding of something right now, they may have overapplied.
[00:45:47] Speaker A: Well, tell me then, do you think that humans could realistically be able to develop other, like, true six senses in our lifetime? Like that? There's anything that either we'll see, develop, or that has been developed and we'll understand it a little better or what do you think? Do we have any horizon?
[00:46:07] Speaker B: I would have said an unequivocal no before, but as I've been enlightened and kind of exposed just through watching documentaries and things, to things like these psychedelics. Like, I've never tried one, but I'm now, I used to think, okay, that's just for real drug addicts, right. Like, people that just trying to get it kind of high that I'm scared to get.
You know what I mean? Like, now I'm like, okay, because I'm watching how they're now, you know, medical science is showing all these benefits to people with PTSD and traumatic things and basically the true ability for these things to create neural pathways in the mind and create neurons. And it's just like, wow, this is interesting.
Not to say I want to do this because I want to have A new high or something like that. But this is actually fascinating from a kind of brain. Brain chemistry standpoint. Yeah.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: There are people that believe that the medicinal mushrooms, the psychedelic mushrooms, are connected in some way to the development of consciousness in general. Like, you go back 2 million years or whatever, or however long like that is, there's a connection there, basically. And how you get from a chimpanzee brain to a human brain, there's something there or whatever, some other older, hominid type of thing.
I think that.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: I mean, put it this way. That's my point. I'm open to all those ideas now, where just a few years ago I would have said, you're crazy for saying that.
But through what I've learned, it's like, okay, well, that's not. You know, I've seen crazier things actually be proved right. So, you know, I. I assumed when we.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: When I was preparing for this, I assumed that you would find some way to work in the Force and a Star wars reference in this part, but I was wrong. You surprised me once again.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: Yes. Unfortunately, I haven't. Yeah, I'm disappointed in myself now. You've upset me. We may have to do this whole show over again.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Audience, I apologize, but I think that.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: Because I was thinking about where to put in that a Sith only deals with absolutes because. But we can't in this one because there's no absolute.
[00:48:10] Speaker A: With the sixth, you have the whole Force. The Force would conceivably be a Sith, but I do not think that we'll be able to develop it now. If it's there, it may be something we can access it and better understand, like. So it's kind of a nuanced point to the question, just in the sense that I think there's more going on with us. I would say we, like, we're like an iceberg, basically, at this point where you have. You know, with an iceberg, you can see what you can see above the water, and there's much more going on below. It's much larger below the water than what's above the water. And so I look at our consciousness and our senses and so forth like that, really. And so I think that we probably can get deeper into the senses we have.
We probably can figure out some other things that we could do that we can do. And some people are able to do that. You know, even if you get into deep meditation and so forth like that, there. There's reports that you can be able to access different things about yourself and so forth. So I think all that's on the table. But developing, like, developing new senses, I would think would take a long time. You know, like it would require a need to be present for a long time and then some level of evolution, some level of competitive advantage to the people that have evolved, that whatever, you know, that everything. And then it eventually permeates throughout, so.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: Well, I would say this because you're right. I would say if we looked at something this is. I'm making a tie in to two things that aren't the same. But let's say if we looked at something like flight as a sense. Just stay with me.
Obviously humans can't fly, so you're right. From an evolutionary standpoint, there would have to be a reason for us to need to fly.
I can make a joke about rising sea levels, but that could be for another show.
So. So that's what I'm saying. But I do think that, to the point you just made, that what we're saying maybe from a sixth sense standpoint is not about an evolutionary change to kind of create the ability to have an extra sense, but really reversion back to the type of human condition and environment to allow us to tap into what we already have there.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: And I would say this, that the evolution of human societies generally over the last couple hundred years definitely prevents that. Because I think especially through the industrialization of just the industrial age and the kind of machination machines and all this kind of inorganic way that we've begun to live our life. I mean, think about how sterile everything is in our homes and all that. We don't have a connection with smells. We have so much light pollution. We can't see the stars generally in any city anymore. And like, I'm thinking about my kids. They don't even know what a starry night looks like, you know what I mean? And I really haven't seen one since the 80s, since I was a kid and used to go to the mountains of North Carolina and sit there and watch shooting stars. I mean, my kids have never seen a meteor or shooting stars. So even in my short life of 40 something years, I'm already seeing that each generation is losing a little bit more of connection in nature. And I don't know if we can reconnect in the way that we live today. Because one thing that is permeating us as a human society today is stress.
And when the mind is stressed and not relaxed, it can't open up to really have these type of additional experiences.
[00:51:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I guess. Let me leave it alone to the depth. Basically.
You can't access that depth that this probably requires.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: The stress forces us to remain shallow and on the surface, like you're saying about the iceberg. To only be at the surface of the water and see only that part. We can't look down and get deep. And that's the concern I have for our global society at this point, that all of us are in this hyper condition of stress.
So.
[00:51:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's an excellent point, man, that that would be an impediment as far as being able to access anything deeper because, yeah, it creates that fight or flight and fight or flight time. It's like you. You either fight or you fly because it's. It's survival and so forth, so. Well, no, it's an interesting discussion, man. Interesting discussion. And we appreciate everybody for joining us on this. On this episode of Call It Like I See it. And until next time, I'm James Keith Keys.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: I'm Tundag on Lana.
[00:52:24] Speaker A: All right. Subscribe Rate Review Tell us what you think and we'll talk to you next time.
